Catherine Susan Fall, Baroness Fall,MBE (born 2 October 1967) is a British peer and political advisor. She served asDeputy Chief of Staff forDavid Cameron when he wasprime minister and became alife peer in September 2015.
Born on 2 October 1967,[1] Fall is the daughter ofSir Brian Fall, a former British Ambassador to theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics, and has an identical twin, Melanie. She was educated atCobham Hall, Kent,King's School, Canterbury, andSt Hilda's College, Oxford, where she met Cameron while both were studyingPhilosophy, Politics and Economics.[2]
Fall worked withGeorge Osborne at theConservative Research Department,[3] and became one of theNotting Hill set.[4] She was reported to be Osborne's girlfriend during the 1990s.[5] In 2001 she acted as Cameron's advisor for his first election campaign in theOxfordshire parliamentary constituency ofWitney.[6] She also worked for a ConservativeMember of the European Parliament and for theConfederation of British Industry.[7] She then worked inMichael Howard's business liaison unit, during hisleadership of theConservative Party and ofthe Opposition,[4] before becoming a director of the think-tankThe Atlantic Partnership.[citation needed] She became Cameron's private office secretary after he waselected in 2005 to replace Howard as the Leader of the Conservative Party.
When Cameron became prime minister in May 2010, he appointed Conservative advisorEdward LlewellynDowning Street Chief of Staff and created the role of Downing Street Deputy Chief of Staff, with responsibility for supporting the Chief of Staff, a position he gave to Fall,[8] with a salary of £100,000.[9] In 2011, Fall was ranked by theEvening Standard as one of the 100 most influential people in London.[10] Briefed to keep Cameron "punctual and punctilious", by 2012 she had been nicknamed "The Gatekeeper".[11] She was nominated for a life peerage in Cameron'sDissolution Honours List in August 2015,[12]gazetted in September 2015.[13] The next year she became a senior adviser to theBrunswick Group.[14][7]
In March 2020, Fall published a memoir of her time in government,The Gatekeeper: Life at the Heart of Number 10.[15] Writing in theEvening Standard,Julian Glover declared this to be the book of the week.[16]
On 22 October 2015, she was createdBaroness Fall, of Ladbroke Grove in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for life.[17]
Fall was appointedMember of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the2024 New Year Honours for services to culture as a former non-executive director of the Cultural Recovery Board.[18]
Fall was married to businessman Ralph Ward-Jackson, with whom she has a son and a daughter.[7]
