In 1996, Mr. Pewter was convicted of raping an 11 year old girl and sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. Prior to Mr. Pewter’s release on licence, he became the subject of Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). MAPPA is a system created by sections 3-5 of Criminal Justice Act 2003 which allows law-enforcement, prison and probation agencies to jointly devise and implement measures to protect the public from dangerous offenders. A report dealing with Mr. Pewter was created under MAPPA. A single-sentence précis of this report dealing with Mr. Pewter’s behaviour whilst in prison was included in a letter sent by a Detective Constable to Mr. Pewter’s ex-wife’s solicitors, for use in ancillary relief proceedings. The Detective Constable’s inclusion of the précis was without the consent of MAPPA, but was motivated by his concern over the safety of Mr. Pewter’s ex-wife and daughter. Mr. Pewter then made a complaint against the Detective Constable to the Metropolitan Police on basis that the précis was inaccurate, but this claim was found to be unsubstantiated. Mr. Pewter chose not to file an appeal with the Independent Police Complaints Commission as he considered them to be in cahoots with the police. Instead, Mr. Pewter brought judicial review proceedings of the Police decision not to disclose the MAPPA report in spite of releasing the précis. He contended that only disclosure of the MAPPA report would enable him to adequately file an appeal with IPCC.

The Claimant accepted that PII attached to the MAPPA report, but argued that the précis "waived" PII as the information was placed in the public domain, relying on the breach of confidence case of Attorney-General -v- Guardian Newspapers Ltd (No 2) (‘Spycatcher’) [1990] 1 AC 109. The Defendant contended that materials to which confidence attaches are inherently different from documents subject to PII, as there is no quasi-contractual relationship that is capable of waiver by a party.

Wilkie J., in rejecting the application, confirmed that the inadvertent bringing of PII material into the public domain is incapable of affecting the status of the document as being immune from disclosure. Wilkie J. followed without reservations the pre-Human Rights Act 1998 case of Rogers v Secretary of State for the Home Department [1973] A.C. 388, which established the principle that inadvertent disclosure of information subject to PII cannot affect the status of the source material as immune from disclosure.

Wilkie J. further rejected the application on the grounds that the Claimant was not entitled to resort to judicial review before exhausting all other routes of appeal, his lack of confidence in the IPCC notwithstanding.