Julia Hartley-Brewer: Challenging government monitoring

Julia Hartley-Brewer is a high-profile journalist and broadcaster.

During the Covid pandemic, it emerged that the UK government undertook monitoring and sought to influence online political speech. Research by Big Brother Watch - showed that the social media posts of our client (and many other notable individuals) on Covid had been monitored by a Cabinet Office unit ostensibly designed to counter ‘misinformation’ online: the ‘Rapid Response Unit’.

Julia Hartley-Brewer, alongside Big Brother Watch approached AWO’s legal team for support in challenging the inaccurate information.

Of particular concern to the client was that not only had the Cabinet Office monitored her posts, she had inaccurate inferences drawn by government officials about her views and had been labelled as a ‘vaccine sceptic’ in official internal government documents. This was despite her very public position in support of vaccines as a safe and effective measure against Covid.

AWO engaged in pre-action correspondence with the Cabinet office on Ms Hartley-Brewer’s behalf and within 6 weeks were able to secure a full public apology and commitment from the Cabinet Office to rectify the error and inform other government department recipients of the inaccurate document of the change.

AWO continues to support Big Brother Watch to work to understand the full scope of the government’s work to monitor and influence online speech.