Heather Brooke and the MPs expenses

Heather Brooke has finally been given some credit for her role in the MPs expenses saga.

The journalist and writer has broken many stories to the press before, dug around using the Freedom of Information Act, and revealed many secrets to the public – but this is no doubt one of her biggest achievements to date.

The Guardian’s G2 featured her brilliant article today, where she described fighting with the Commons for the past five years in order to get the expenses information made public.

“When I explained that I was after a breakdown of MPs’ expenses, I was met with a baffled silence,” she said.

Definitely worth a read, especially the quotes from the head of the House of Commons Fees Office, Andrew Walker:

“There is checking where there are receipts. Where there are no receipts there is no checking.”

Last October, journalism postgraduate students at City University were treated to a lecture on making Freedom of Information requests by Heather.  Her enthusiasm and love of this kind of investigative journalism was very apparent, and in her G2 article she mentioned how she has always wanted to be that kind of reporter.

After all of her efforts, she admitted in The Guardian that she was “livid”  that The Telegraph managed to get hold of the data before July 2009. On the other hand, she added that as a campaigner she was thrilled to see it out in the public domain – where it should be.

Today, Heather wrote on her ‘Your Right To Know’ website:

“Is this the apex of my campaign? My 15 minutes of fame might now be coming to a close if the Commons actually comes clean, gets rid of the corrupt and institutes a new transparency regime. That actually looks as though it might now happen.”

I am sure that there will be plenty more to come from Heather though, and I’m glad she finally got the credit she deserved.

Watch her top five tips on Freedom of Information requests (courtesy of XCity)