Heather Rose Brooke (born 1970) is a British-American journalist and
freedom of information
Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, indigeno ...
campaigner. Resident since the 1990s in the UK, she helped to expose the
2009 expenses scandal
The United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal was a major political scandal that emerged in 2009, concerning expenses claims made by members of the British Parliament in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords over the previous year ...
, which culminated in the resignation of
House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, dozens of MPs standing down in the
2010 general election and multiple MPs being jailed.
[Tonkin, Boyd]
"The lives of others: Heather Brooke's new book opens up further fronts in the war to set information free"
''The Independent'', 9 April 2010.
Brooke is Professor of Journalism at
City University London
City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...
's Department of Journalism. She is the author of ''Your Right to Know'' (2006), ''The Silent State'' (2010), and ''The Revolution Will Be Digitised'' (2011).
Early life
Education
Brooke was born in
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
in the United States to parents originally from
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
, England, and has dual United States/United Kingdom citizenship. She grew up in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
, Washington, where her mother worked for
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...
) and graduated from
Federal Way High School
Federal Way High School is a public high school located in Federal Way, Washington. It was originally built in 1938. A new campus opened in the fall of 2016.
Academics
* Advanced Placement courses: Calculus, Statistics, and Photography.
* Pre-AP ...
.
According to ''
The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its par ...
'', she briefly moved to England as a teenager, but returned to the United States when she was 15.
[Black, Claire]
"Interview: Heather Brooke, journalist and writer"
''The Scotsman'', 10 April 2010. She attended the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
Department of Communication, where she graduated in 1992 with a double major degree in journalism and political science. While there, she wrote for the student newspaper, ''
The Daily'', covering news stories and acting as the paper's
sex columnist
A sex columnist is a writer of a newspaper or magazine column about sex. Sex advice columns may take the form of essays or, more frequently, answers to questions posed by readers. Sex advice columns can usually be found in alt weekly newspapers, w ...
, writing with what she called a "feminist" slant.
Early career
An internship with ''
The Spokesman-Review
''The Spokesman-Review'' is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Spokane, Washington, the city's sole remaining daily publication. It has the third-highest readership among daily newspapers in the state, with most of its readership base in ...
'' in
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat and largest city of Thurston County. It is southwest of the state's most populous city, Seattle, and is a cultural center of the southern Puget Sound region.
European ...
to cover the state legislature gave her an early exposure to using public records requests to investigate the expenses of politicians, although she found little beyond taking advantage of
frequent flyer miles
A frequent-flyer program (American English) or frequent-flyer programme (British English) is a loyalty program offered by an airline.
Many airlines have frequent-flyer programs designed to encourage airline customers enrolled in the program ...
. After graduation, she worked for a year at the ''Spokesman-Review'', but it lacked the funds to keep her on longer.
She then became a crime reporter for the ''
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
The ''Spartanburg Herald-Journal'' is a daily newspaper, the primary newspaper for Spartanburg, South Carolina, United States.
History
The origins of the paper lie with ''The Spartan'', a weekly paper reportedly first printed in about 1842†...
'', where she reported on murder cases and uncovered flaws in
South Carolina
)''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no)
, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
's forensic crime lab.
Describing herself as "burnt out" from covering over 300 murders, Brooke took a break from journalism.
When her mother died in a car accident in 1996, and her father moved back to England, she no longer had family in America and decided to relocate to the United Kingdom.
She enrolled for a master's in English literature at the
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...
,
[ then moved to East London with her husband, where she took a job with the BBC as a copywriter. Boyd Tonkin wrote in 2010 that when she arrived in the UK she was immediately introduced to the "British disease": "the overweening haughtinesss of bureaucratic jobsworths, and the deference of citizens."][ She became a neighbourhood activist, describing local public officials as having a surprisingly hostile attitude compared to local governments in the United States.]
Freedom of Information writing and activism
With the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (c. 36) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public "right of access" to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation
...
, Brooke began work on a book explaining how to use the law, which was not scheduled to come into effect for another five years. Originally titled ''Your Right to Know: How to Use the Freedom of Information Act and Other Access Laws'', the book was reissued in October 2004 as ''Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to Freedom of Information'', with a foreword by Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger (born 29 December 1953) is a British journalist, who was formerly editor-in-chief of ''The Guardian'' and then principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Rusbridger became editor-in-chief of ''The Guardian'' in 1995, hav ...
, editor of ''The Guardian''. In October 2006 it was revised and published in paperback and hardcover editions that included a foreword by satirist Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop (born 13 July 1960) is a British journalist, satirist, writer, broadcaster, and editor of the magazine ''Private Eye''. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes and has been a team captain on the BBC quiz show ...
.
BBC minutes
In early 2007, Brooke won a landmark legal case that led the BBC to disclose the minutes of its Board of Governors' meeting of 28 January 2004. At that meeting, the governors had decided to dismiss director general Greg Dyke
Gregory Dyke (born 20 May 1947) is a British media executive, football administrator, journalist, and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has had a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing ' ...
and issue an apology to the government in response to the Hutton Inquiry
The Hutton Inquiry was a 2003 judicial inquiry in the UK chaired by Lord Hutton, who was appointed by the Labour government to investigate the controversial circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, a biological warfare expert and f ...
. Brooke, along with journalists from ''The Guardian'', had requested the minutes shortly after the Freedom of Information Act came into force, but the BBC resisted disclosure for nearly two years. In December 2006, the case came before the Information Tribunal
The Information Tribunal was a tribunal non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was established as the Data Protection Tribunal to hear appeals under the Data Protection Act 1984. Its name was changed to reflect its wider responsi ...
, which the following month ruled that the BBC should disclose the minutes.
MPs expenses
In October 2004, Brooke started to request details of MPs' expenses, via the House of Commons Freedom of Information Officer, Bob Castle. However, the information was in a bulk format, and could not be broken down to individual MPs.
In January 2005, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 came into force, allowing members of the public to request disclosure of information from public bodies. She started out requesting all 646 MPs' expenses, but the Commons claimed that would be too costly. She then asked for request for travel information (refused); then for the names and salaries of MPs' staff, blocked personally by the Speaker of the House of Commons Speaker of the House of Commons is a political leadership position found in countries that have a House of Commons, where the membership of the body elects a speaker to lead its proceedings.
Systems that have such a position include:
* Speaker of ...
Michael Martin. She then asked for information on second homes for the details for all MPs, but this was also refused.
In 2006, Brooke reduced her request to 10 MPs—the leaders of the parties and a few ministers. After again being refused, in July 2006 she made an appeal to the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. Her request was considered for a year, together with two other similar requests on MPs' expenses which had been appealed to the Commissioner in 2005, from Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas of ''The Sunday Times''. The Information Commissioner ordered the release of some information on 15 June 2007. House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
authorities objected to this order in June 2007 and MPs had, in May 2007, voted in favour of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill
The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill was a private members bill introduced to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 2007 which failed to become law after a sponsor for the Bill could not be found in the House of Lords.
Background a ...
which sought to exempt MPs from the 2000 act. The amendment bill was ultimately withdrawn prior to second reading in the House of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...
because peers were unwilling to sponsor the bill.
In February 2008, after referral to an Information Tribunal
The Information Tribunal was a tribunal non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was established as the Data Protection Tribunal to hear appeals under the Data Protection Act 1984. Its name was changed to reflect its wider responsi ...
, it was ruled that Commons authorities had to release information on 14 MPs. The Speaker appealed against the decision on behalf of the House of Commons, challenging the requests for publication of expenses for 11 serving MPs: Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chance ...
, David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
, John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott (born 31 May 1938) is a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007. A member of the Labour Party, he w ...
, Menzies Campbell
Walter Menzies Campbell, Baron Campbell of Pittenweem, (; born 22 May 1941), often known as Ming Campbell, is a British Liberal Democrat politician, advocate and former athlete. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Fife from ...
, Margaret Beckett
Dame Margaret Mary Beckett (''née'' Jackson; born 15 January 1943) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South since 1983. A member of the Labour Party, she became Britain's first female Foreign S ...
, George Osborne
George Gideon Oliver Osborne (born Gideon Oliver Osborne; 23 May 1971) is a former British politician and newspaper editor who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016 and as First Secretary of State from 2015 to 2016 in the ...
, William Hague
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
, Mark Oaten
Mark Oaten (born 8 March 1964) is a British politician who was a senior member of the Liberal Democrats. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Winchester from 1997 to 2010.
Born in Watford, Hertfordshire, Oaten became a councillor ...
, George Galloway
George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, broadcaster, and writer who is currently leader of the Workers Party of Britain, serving since 2019. Between 1987 and 2010, and then between 2012 and 2015, Galloway was a Member o ...
, Barbara Follett and Ann Keen
Ann Lloyd Keen (''née'' Fox; born 26 November 1948) is a British Labour Party politician, who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Brentford and Isleworth from 1997, until she was defeated by Conservative candidate Mary Macleod in 2010. I ...
; and three former MPs: Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
, Peter Mandelson
Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as First Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010. He was President of the Board of Trade in 1998 and from 2008 to 2010. He is the ...
and John Wilkinson. The appeal was heard at the High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Courts of England and Wales, Senior Cou ...
, which ruled on 16 May 2008 in favour of releasing the information:
No appeal was lodged against the High Court ruling, and the details were made public on 23 May 2008. In January 2009, the Leader of the House of Commons, Harriet Harman
Harriet Ruth Harman (born 30 July 1950) is a British politician and solicitor who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Camberwell and Peckham, formerly Peckham, since 1982. A member of the Labour Party, she has served in various Cabi ...
, tabled a motion to exempt MPs' expenses from being disclosed under a Freedom of Information request. Labour MPs were placed under a three line whip
A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. This means ensuring that members of the party vote according to the party platform, rather than according to their own individual ideology o ...
to force the motion through the Commons. However, opposition parties stated they would vote against the proposals, and large scale public opposition emerged. The proposals were ultimately dropped on 21 January 2009. The Commons authorities announced that full disclosure of all MPs' expenses would be published on 1 July 2009, after the 2009 European Elections in early June 2009.
In May 2009, ''The Daily Telegraph'' obtained unedited details of all MPs' expenses, including address details which showed the practice of "flipping", that is, changing the registered main address for various tax and expense purposes. The disclosures led to several MP's resignations and a national scandal.
Aftermath and recognition
On 23 February 2010 BBC Four
BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002 showed a dramatised account about Heather Brooke's campaign for disclosure of MPs' expenses, titled ''On Expenses
On, on, or ON may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* On (band), a solo project of Ken Andrews
* ''On'' (EP), a 1993 EP by Aphex Twin
* ''On'' (Echobelly album), 1995
* ''On'' (Gary Glitter album), 2001
* ''On'' (Imperial Teen album), 200 ...
''. The role of Heather Brooke was played by Anna Maxwell Martin
Anna Maxwell Martin (born Anna Charlotte Martin; 27 May 1977),Births, Marriages & Deaths Index of England & Wales, 1984–2006 listed birth name as ''Anna Charlotte Martin''; Registration year 1977; Registration District Beverley, Yorkshire som ...
. Brooke still serves as a visiting professor in the journalism department of City University London and has done since the expenses scandal. She was the first international winner of the FOI award in 2009 at the Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. In March 2010 she was awarded the Judges' Prize in the British Press Awards, and the Special Commendation Award at the Tenth Annual Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. She also made the 2010 Happy List
The ''Happy List'' is a list of 100 people in the United Kingdom "who give back, volunteer, and who make Britain a better balanced, happier country." It has been published annually in April by the ''Independent on Sunday'', a British national Sund ...
for her persistence that "led to the MPs' expenses scandal, introducing us to house flipping, duck houses and other fiddles. The happiness came, first, with the delicious details; second with the moral superiority we can now feel over those who legislate and lecture us on how to live."
The Washington Coalition for Open Government granted Brooke a "Key Award", "in honor of a good deed in advancement of open government." The Coalition also gave her a pre-conference reception and keynote placement in their first Washington State Open Government Conference. The Keynote was a through debriefing of operations conducted to liberate Britain. Brooke included a personal account of her role in the MPs expenses scandal in her second book, ''The Silent State: How Secrecy and Misinformation are Destroying Democracy'' (2010).
In recognition of her work, the UK Press Gazette
''Press Gazette'', formerly known as ''UK Press Gazette'' (UKPG), is a British media trade magazine dedicated to journalism and the press. First published in 1965, it had a circulation of about 2,500, before becoming online-only in 2013. Publis ...
ranked Brooke as number 5 in their Top 10 list of journalists in February 2013.
WikiLeaks reporting and ''The Revolution Will Be Digitised''
Brooke has continued to blog about freedom of information issues, as well as writing and speaking at conferences.[See her blog a]
HeatherBrooke.org
She was commissioned in 2010 to write her third book, ''The Revolution Will Be Digitised'' (2011), exploring "the world of computer hackers, internet whistleblowers and pro-democracy campaigners," and including in-depth research on WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks () is an international Nonprofit organization, non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous Source (journalism), sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activism, Internet acti ...
. Brooke stated "It was clear to me from my own reporting and campaigning around freedom of information that society is undergoing a radical transformation. The amount of knowledge in the world is now so vast and technology so adept at zero-cost duplication that no government, company or organisation can hope to keep control." She went on to say that, "When I met Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
of Wikileaks he was still a little-known figure but his stories of battles fought to free information and ambitions to free even more in future spurred me to begin writing this book."
While working on ''The Revolution Will Be Digitised'' (2011), Heather Brooke received a copy of the documents from a disgruntled WikiLeaks volunteer consisting of the raw material of the United States diplomatic cables leak
The United States diplomatic cables leak, widely known as Cablegate, began on Sunday, 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and ...
. Brooke worked with ''The Guardian'' to edit and publish the material, while concerned about genuine harm minimisation. In an op-ed published in ''The Guardian'' on 29 November 2010, she wrote: "Leaks are not the problem; they are the symptom. They reveal a disconnect between what people want and need to know and what they actually do know. The greater the secrecy, the more likely a leak. The way to move beyond leaks is to ensure a robust regime for the public to access important information."
Brooke also starred in '' We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks'' as a pundit giving commentary based on her freedom of information campaigning experience and dealings with Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army inte ...
. In the film, Brooke said re: Wikileaks' publishing of the US State Department
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
's diplomatic cables, "It was that whole Wizard of Oz moment. We all look at these politicians – oh wow, they're so powerful – and then it was the little dog pulling the curtain away."
Bibliography
* ''Your Right to Know: A Citizens Guide to Freedom of Information''. Pluto Press, 2004.
* ''The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy''. William Heinemann, 2010.
*''The Revolution Will Be Digitised''. William Heinemann, 2011.
References
External links
* WikiQuote Page of Heather Brooke quotations
heatherbrooke.org
– Personal website
Heather Brooke on Twitter as Newsbrooke
Journalisted – Articles by Heather Brooke
The Guardian Author Profile & List of Contributions: Heather Brooke
The NS interview: Heather Brooke
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brooke, Heather
American people of English descent
Alumni of the University of Warwick
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American women writers
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American activists
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British women radio presenters
Freedom of information activists
BBC newsreaders and journalists
Academics of City, University of London
American emigrants to England
1970 births
Living people
Freedom of information in the United Kingdom
British women journalists
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American women radio presenters
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