Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with the woman who started the huge expenses scandal rocking Britain's parliament. Freelance writer Heather Brooke was the first to file a freedom of information request for the expenses that British lawmakers got reimbursed by taxpayers. That request back in 2005 led to the embarrassing revelations coming out now in Britain.
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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. Embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says that he will not be calling for an election any time soon. He says that would bring chaos to the country. It's likely that some voters want to fire the entire British parliament right now. Lawmakers from all parties have been tarnished by a huge scandal over the filing of inappropriate expense claims. The latest gem – a prominent politician got taxpayers to pay for a duck island in his backyard pond. Embarrassing details come out pretty much every day courtesy of London's daily Telegraph newspaper. But the scandal actually began three years ago with a freedom of information request filed by a freelance writer. Her name is Heather Brooke. Heather Brooke lived here in the United States. She moved to Britain in 1997. She says despite the fact that the U.K. has a freedom of information law; she was not able to access British public records.
HEAHTER BROOKE: The strange thing in this country is that there are no public records. There's lots of records kept in the name of the public but the main people who can't access them are the public. So when I found out about this freedom of information law that came in in 2005 I wrote a book about it advising people how to make use of it. And so I kind of thought I ought to be doing some requests myself. And one of the first ones I did was to the House of Commons. It was series of requests asking for receipts on different types of their allowances.
MULLINS: Okay now just to explain for those who don't know. The House of Commons is kind of, kind of, the equivalent of our Lower House in Congress. The House versus the Senate. So these are elected officials. What sparked your interest specifically in the MPs in the House of Commons and their expense claims?
BROOKE: Well this exercise of targeting MPs' expenses was actually a repeat of a story I'd worked on in Washington State as a student reporter in which I'd gone into my State House and asked for my local politician's expense receipts. What happened then, in a matter of days, I was given boxes full of receipts, everything – airline tickets, room service bills, the lot. That's kind of what inspired me to make this same request over in Parliament.
MULLINS: One of the interesting things here is that it did not go from your filing this freedom of information act request to the disclosure. There was an awful lot of court time spent by you, by government officials trying to block your request and other requests, in the meantime. Just give us a sketch of what you've been through in the past what four or five, six years.
BROOKE: Effectively I faced obstruction the whole way through. With the MPs' expenses finally I decided right. I'm going to make this a test case. And so I just appealed it the whole way through. Finally it went to the High Court. It wasn't until I won in the High Court that the House of Commons finally conceded and agreed that they would publish the receipts.
MULLINS: And prior to your going to the High Court there was a hearing in February of 2008. You describe that in an article we're going to post on our website, theworld.org, but just give us a sketch of what happened then.
BROOKE: It was here that we, for the first time got to interrogate and sort of cross examine the Parliamentary Fees Office. And what we discovered by questioning this man was that there were no checks in place. And Andrew Walker, the director of the Fees Office, when asked, well how do you know? If you don't do any checks how do you know that those things are reasonable? That was our working assumption. That these are honorable members. They're beyond question and we take them on a gentleman's word.
MULLINS: Yes. And that harkens back to something that he said when he was on the stand. He said MPs, Members of Parliament, should be allowed to carry on their duties free from interference. Public confidence... This is a different quote. Is not the overriding concern per say. And one that will live on in infamy I think Heather. Do you know the one I'm referring to? “Transparency will damage democracy.â€
BROOKE: It's not an uncommon view here. Even now when all the scandal has broken forth there's quite a lot of commentators in the media, not just politicians but even some journalists, who are saying, oh this disclosure is really damaging to democracy.
MULLINS: What about the questions around the telegraph newspaper that broke this story paying $140,000 for computerized disks containing more than a million individual expense claims by Members of Parliament. Do you know if the Telegraph did pay?
BROOKE: It's kind of common knowledge that they have paid for this disk. It's not even a disk. It is so much it's actually a hard drive.
MULLINS: Oh who would they have paid?
BROOKE: They've paid a whistle blower. Somebody who is reported to have worked in the scanning in of all these receipts. All the information was collected because of the freedom of information request and the High Court ruling. However the disclosure of it has all been done because of the leak.
MULLINS: And at this point do you plan on filing other freedom of information requests?
BROOKE: Oh yes I do. I file them all the time.
MULLINS: We should say anyone can do this. I mean in Britain or in America. This is not something...
BROOKE: Yeah that's right. Anybody can do it. You don't have to be a British citizen.
MULLINS: And you don't have to be a full time reporter. I mean you're...
BROOKE: You don't?
MULLINS: No, you're a freelancer. You don't have a big institution behind you. You're a blogger.
BROOKE: That's right. And an author. So I've been classed as a freelance troublemaker. Maybe that's how I should describe myself.
MULLINS: Alright. Thank you. Otherwise known as Heather Brooke, an American and British freelance writer and Journalism teacher living now in London. She's the author of the book, Your Right to Know. Thank you Heather.
transcript
Heather Brooke's blog 'Your Right to Know'