Sir Michael Cathel Fallon (born 14 May 1952) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Defence from 2014 to 2017. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Sevenoaks from 1997 to 2019, having previously served as MP for Darlington from 1983 to 1992.
Fallon attended the independent Epsom College and read Classics and Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. After university he joined the Conservative Research Department. Elected for Darlington at the 1983 general election, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education and Science in 1990. He lost his seat as MP for Darlington at the 1992 general election.
Fallon re-entered Parliament at the 1997 general election as MP for Sevenoaks. He served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2012, Minister of State for Business and Enterprise from 2012 to 2014, Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change from 2013 to 2014 and Minister for Portsmouth in 2014. In the 2014 cabinet reshuffle he was promoted to Secretary of State for Defence. He resigned from the post after being implicated in the 2017 Westminster sexual misconduct allegations.
Michael Cathel Fallon was born in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. His father was an Irish-born surgeon, Dr Martin Fallon, who was educated in Dublin and became a high-ranking medical officer in the British Army. Dr Fallon received the OBE for services to the wounded including at Arnhem. Michael Fallon was educated at Craigflower Preparatory School near Dunfermline and at Epsom College, a private boys' school in Surrey. He then read Classics and Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 1974 with a Master of Arts (MA Hons) degree.
As a student, Fallon was active in the European Movement and the "Yes" youth campaign in the 1975 referendum. After university he joined the Conservative Research Department, working first for Lord Carrington in the House of Lords until 1977 and then as European desk officer until 1979. He became research assistant to Baroness Elles in 1979, around the time that she became an MEP.
He was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Darlington in July 1982, and fought the Darlington by-election on 24 March 1983, which was held after the Labour MP Ted Fletcher had died. Although Fallon lost to Labour's Ossie O'Brien by 2,412 votes, he defeated O'Brien 77 days later by 3,438 votes in the 1983 general election.
Fallon was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Energy Cecil Parkinson following the 1987 general election, and in 1988 joined the government of Margaret Thatcher as an Assistant Whip, becoming a Lord Commissioner to the Treasury in 1990. Fallon, alongside Michael Portillo and Michael Forsyth, visited Thatcher on the eve of her resignation in a last-ditch and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to persuade her to reconsider her decision.
Junior minister in the Department for Education and Science
Thatcher appointed Fallon Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Education and Science in July 1990, a position he continued to hold under the new premiership of John Major. In this office Fallon headed legislation that led to the local management of schools, which among other changes gave schools a greater degree of financial independence, including control of their own bank accounts and cheque books. He remained in that office until the 1992 general election, when he lost his seat at Darlington to Labour's Alan Milburn by a margin of 2,798 votes.
Return to the House of Commons
Fallon was selected to stand in the safe Conservative seat of Sevenoaks, after the sitting member, Mark Wolfson, decided not to stand again at the 1997 general election. At that election he held Sevenoaks with a substantially reduced majority.
Soon after his return to parliament, Fallon was appointed by William Hague as Opposition Spokesman for Trade and Industry and then as Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, but in October 1998 he resigned from the front bench, owing to ill health, remaining on the backbenches until Hague appointed him as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.
From 1999 he was a member of the Treasury Select Committee and chairman of its Sub-Committee (2001–10). He also served on the executive committee of the 1922 Committee between 2005 and 2007.
In September 2012, David Cameron appointed Fallon as Minister for Business and Enterprise and he also became a Privy Councillor.
Fallon has been a director at Tullett Prebon, a leading brokerage firm in the City of London, and was one of the biggest supporters of the privatisation of the Royal Mail.
In January 2014, Fallon was appointed as Minister for Portsmouth. Six months later, on 15 July 2014, Cameron promoted him to the Cabinet, as Secretary of State for Defence.
Secretary of State for Defence (2014–2017)
In February 2016, the week after a leaked United Nations report had found the Saudi-led coalition guilty of conducting "widespread and systematic" air strikes against civilians in Yemen – including camps for internally displaced people, weddings, schools, hospitals, religious centers, vehicles and markets – and the same day the International Development Select Committee had said that the UK should end all arms exports to Saudi Arabia because of ongoing, large-scale human rights violations by the Kingdom's armed forces in Yemen, Fallon was criticised for attending a £450-a-head dinner for an arms-industry trade-body.