The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy [Paperback]

'Will strike fear into the hearts of politicians, assuming they have hearts. Anyone with a vote worth stealing should read this. You won't know whether to laugh or rise up and overthrow absolutely everything.' --Charlie Brooker

'Heather Brooke puts every other British journalist to shame. She single-handedly exposed the systemic corruption that had become an embedded part of parliament at the turn of the 20th century. In doing so she has changed British public culture and earned an essential place in our national history. She is an extraordinary figure who must be celebrated.' --Peter Oborne

'Secrecy is one of the great British diseases. It's so secret that we don't even admit we suffer from it. Heather Brooke is part of the cure - challenging the routine concealment and distortion of important information. There should be more journalists doing the same.' --Nick Davies, author of FLAT EARTH NEWS

The most important and entertaining political book you’ll read this year, by the journalist who exposed the MPs' expenses and changed C21st Britain.

Revealing that the recent MPs’ expenses scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg, Heather Brooke exposes the shocking and often farcical lack of transparency at all levels of government. At a time when the State knows more than ever about us, Brooke argues that without proper access to the information that citizens pay for, Britain can never be a true democracy. *SECRECY*: anonymous bureaucrats, clandestine courts, men in tights and the true cost of ‘public’ information. *PROPAGANDA*: spin, PR and bullshitting by numbers. The British government spent £38m more on advertising last year than their closest competitor, Proctor and Gamble – find out what they spent it on! *SURVEILLANCE*: discover the extent of Britain’s network of databases spying on ordinary citizens, *EXPENSES*: read, for the first time, the exclusive and definitive account of Brooke’s five-year campaign to have MPs’ expenses revealed, which rocked the nation and transformed Britain’s political landscape.

Written by one of the country's leading investigative journalists (‘a total ninja’ – Ben Goldacre), The Silent State is the most important and entertaining political book you’ll read this year. Revealing that the recent MPs’ expenses scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg, Heather Brooke exposes the shocking and often farcical lack of transparency at all levels of government – whether it’s their refusal to publish staff directories that expose the true extent of the British arms trade, ‘official’ figures that are systematically manipulated before public release, or the fact that there’s actually a government department dedicated to cutting bureaucracy comprised entirely of bureaucrats titled – you guessed it – the Bureaucracy Reduction Group. At a time when the State knows more than ever about us, Brooke argues that without proper access to the information that citizens pay for, Britain can never be a true democracy. SECRETS: anonymous bureaucrats, clandestine courts, men in tights and the true cost of ‘public’ information PROPOGANDA: the British government spent £38m more on advertising last year than their closest competitor, Proctor and Gamble – find out what they spent it on! SURVEILLANCE: not just CCTV and DNA databases – discover the extent of Britain’s network of databases spying on ordinary citizens, including a Home Office system that seeks to predict which children will offend in the future EXPENSES: read, for the first time, the exclusive and definitive account of Brooke’s five-year campaign to have MPs’ expenses revealed, which rocked the nation and transformed Britain’s political landscape.

Heather Brooke is a freelance journalist and Freedom of Information campaigner. She writes for all the main national papers and has presented Channel 4’s Dispatches. The BBC will broadcast BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE: THE HEATHER BROOKE STORY in February 2010. In 2009 she was named REFORMER OF THE YEAR and won the Setting the Political Agenda Award from the Political Studies Association.