Camilla Cavendish, The Times’ columnist, has won the Paul Foot award for journalism for her work calling for greater openness in family courts to prevent miscarriages of justice.

She shares the £5,000 award with the Private Eye journalist Richard Brooks. The award was set up by Private Eye and the Observer after the death of the left-wing campaigner and journalist Paul Foot in 2004.

Ms Cavendish’s campaign, featured in The Times, called for a series of changes in the processes by which children are removed from their families. It called for less secrecy in family courts and greater accountability for the social workers who make those decisions.

Last night she said: “What is so overwhelming is the response to this campaign, people feel desperately alone because very quickly they are thrown into the world of the courts and they are not allowed to talk to anyone apart from their MP.”

In one of a series of articles in the newspaper earlier this year, she wrote: “We believe that the Children Act has unintentionally handed enormous power to local authorities and experts, which some are using arbitrarily. And that secrecy keeps injustices from public view.”

The campaign encouraged readers to contact their MP to call for a series of changes in the law.

Writing on her selection for the shortlist, the judges wrote: “Hundreds of readers have contacted their MPs as a result, and the letters those MPs have written to Jack Straw are putting real pressure on the Ministry of Justice.

“There is a frighteningly strong lobby against openness. It includes lawyers, judges, doctors and charity workers who seem to genuinely believe that protecting inadequate public servants from scrutiny is somehow in the best interests of children,” the judges wrote.

Mr Brooks wrote a series of articles exposing the sale of a key government international development business to the organisation’s own management and its subsequent transformation into a money-making machine for executives at the expense of the world’s poor

Also on the shortlist was the Evening Standard’s Andrew Gilligan for his work in uncovering financial irregularities at City Hall, which resulted in the resignation of Lee Jasper, the aide to the former Mayor Ken Livingstone and a series of police investigations. Others on the list were Warwick Mansell of the TLS for his work on the failures of the school testing system, Dan McDougall of the Observer for investigating links between high street retailers and child labour, and Jim Oldfield of the Rossington Community Newsletter.

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