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Law and the Media
order that the person in possession of the relevant items produce them to a constable to take
away, or give a constable access to them. The order must be complied with within seven days
or such longer period as the judge may specify. Failure to comply with an access order is
punishable as a contempt of court.

Excluded material
The police must establish that:

There are reasonable grounds for believing excluded material exists on the
premises specified, and
A search warrant would have been granted under any legislation prior to the
PACE.

A search warrant would have been granted under the previous law in only a very limited
range of circumstances – for example in respect of stolen medical records under Section 26(i)
of the Theft Act 1981.

Special procedure material
The police must establish that there are reasonable grounds for believing that:

A serious arrestable offence has been committed
There is special procedure material on the premises
The material is likely to be of substantial value to the relevant investigation
The material is likely to be admissible evidence, and
Other methods of obtaining the material have failed or have not been tried because
they were bound to fail.

The police must also show that it is in the public interest for the order to be made.

11.3.5 Case law
An understanding of these extremely complex statutory provisions is not helped by the fact
that there have been few cases to illuminate the law and procedures involved.

In Commissioner of Metropolitan Police v Mackenzie (1987), the Vice Squad wanted to obtain
statements and other documents gathered by the Sun during an investigation into underage
homosexual prostitution. The application was issued against the Sun’s editor in person, Kelvin
Mackenzie. Since the police were unable to establish that Mackenzie himself had ever been in
possession of the evidence, their application failed. The application should have been brought
against the newspaper company as the employer of Mackenzie, or the person who actually had
possession of the material. In any event, Mackenzie was able to show that most of the
statements sought by the police had come into existence for the purposes of defending libel
proceedings against the Sun. The statements were therefore covered by legal privilege and
were wholly exempt from the access provisions of the PACE.
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