Camilla Cavendish, Politics, Debrett's 500 2016, People of Influence

Camilla Cavendish

Head, Number 10 Policy Unit

Former Times journalist Camilla Cavendish was appointed to lead David Cameron’s policy unit following last year’s general election. Regarded as a compassionate Conservative reformer, she has called for Cameron to look outside the party’s comfort zone for new ideas. Cavendish had worked in a political capacity prior to joining Number 10: she conducted a review into the NHS for Jeremy Hunt in 2013, in which she recommended introducing training standards across health and social care. As a journalist, she won the Paul Foot Award in 2008 for her work exposing miscarriages of justice in child protection cases, which led then justice secretary Jack Straw to make family courts more accountable by opening them to the media. Cavendish was a contemporary of Cameron’s at Oxford, and a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard.