Local police authorities:accountable quangoes?
01 January 1994
The controversy over the Sheehy report on the police (covering pay and conditions) and the government's reaction to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure (including the right to silence) overshadowed the White Paper on the reform of the structure of the police in England and Wales. Under the proposed reform the mechanism for making the police locally accountable, which evolved between 1829 and 1964, is to be replaced by quangoes cut off from local government.
Watchmen sheriffs and Lord Lieutenants
Prior to 1829 there were only two statutes governing law enforcement, the Statute of Winchester, 1285 (on the appointment of watchmen, hence the term "the Watch" and constables) and the Justices of the Peace Act 1361 (which formalised the practice of appointing knights to keep the King's Peace). The first of the so-called "new" or "modern" police forces was set up in the Metropolitan (Met) police area covering London through the Police Act of 1829. Control over the Met police was exercised then, as now, by the Home Secretary.
The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 created - for the first time - local, elected, authorities in urban areas, with Watch Committees composed of elected councillors. Only with the Police Act of 1856 did it become obligatory for the urban boroughs and the counties to maintain a "new" paid police force. The Local Government Act 1888 set out that the Watch Committees in the counties were to be 50% magistrates, 50% local councillors.
Under Queen Elizabeth, at the end of the sixteenth century, the job of local sheriff was taken over by Lord Lieutenants. The Lord Lieutenants were appointed by the monarch, and in turn they, being men of the nobility, appointed Deputies to carry out day to day functions. They were charged with: raising a local militia from their tenant farmers to supplement the regular army suppressing rebellions and repelling invasions; sorting out corn supplies; and appointing the local magistracy and keeping local court records (known as custos rotulorum). The role of the militia diminished in the late nineteenth century will the rise of the regular army (which had expanded to conquer and police the British Empire). In 1907 the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act formalised the incorporation of locally raised forces into the standing army. Royal Commissions in 1911 and 1946 limited the formal role of Lord Lieutenants to heading advisory committees in the rural areas on the appointment of magistrates (the appointment of magistrates in urban areas since the turn of the century being undertaken at national level by the Lord Chancellor on the advice of regional committees). Lord Lieutenants also figure in contingency planning for internal insurrection or nuclear war drawn up in the 1970s in which they are to assume a central role together with the regional army and police commanders.
The 1964 Police Act
The basis of the present system of "accountability" is set out in the 1964 Police Act. This was preceded by a Royal Commission set up in 1960 and which reported in 1962. The 1964 Act replaced the Watch Committees with local police authorities, and changed their composition so that they would all have two-thirds elected local councillors and one-third local magistrates. The Act formally recognised the practice by which Chief Constables had become independent in enforcing the law from local control. The Royal Commission noted that: "Chief Constables... should be free from the conventional processes of democratic control and influence". The Act sought to preserve the idea of "accountability" through the "tripartite system": regular meetings of Home Office officials, Chief Constables (through the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO), and local police authorities.
The elements of the present system are: 1) local police authorities comprised two-thirds of local councillors and one- third magistrates; 2) police authority with powers to maintain an "efficien