Heather Brooke

Heather Brooke is a journalist and writer living in London. She is the author of ‘Your Right to Know’, a citizens’ guide to using the Freedom of Information Act. In May 2008, she won a High Court case against the House of Commons for the full disclosure of MPs’ second homes allowances. The ruling resulted in calls for full-scale reform of the Parliamentary expense system. Her book ‘The Silent State: How Secrecy & Misinformation is Destroying Democracy’ was published in 2010 by Heinemann. Heather was runner-up for the inaugural Paul Foot award for investigative journalism and her project ‘Justice by postcode’ for The Times was one of the first examples of computer-assisted reporting in the UK. She is a visiting fellow at City University’s Department of Journalism and is a consultant and presenter on several Dispatches documentaries for Channel 4. Prior to moving to the UK, Heather was a newspaper reporter covering politics and crime and has just finished writing her first crime novel.