The British government sees the Police Bill as the foundation stone for a new golden era of policing in Northern Ireland where the RUC, working with specialist civilian support and traffic wardens as part of a new Northern Ireland Police Service, would enjoy the consent and co-operation of the entire community.

The hostile reception the Bill was given during its first parliamentary outing last month should by now have disabused them of that simplistic notion for it was roundly criticised from both sides of the House of Commons.

One unionist described it as the most treacherous piece of legislation since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The wave of "hands off the RUC" hostility was misdirected and ill-informed for it failed to focus on the most difficult policing issues or the Bill's strengths and failures.

Its strengths are that it creates the office of Police Ombudsman to provide independent investigation of complaints against the police; introduces a new oath of office for constables which abolishes the irrelevant obligation to pledge allegiance to the queen; and introduces a new administrative arrangement whereby the Chief Constable, and not the Police Authority, will be responsible for the £600 million police budget and employer of officers and civilian staff.

Through the innovation of an annual policing plan, he will in future have to outline both financial and performance objectives in advance and then publicly account for his effectiveness and efficiency in achieving them. For the first time there will be a clear yardstick by which to judge how well the job is done, how many crimes are cleared up, the effectiveness of traffic policing and just how satisfactorily are the vast sums expended on policing spent.

The Bill's failures are more fundamental and serious, but the opportunity is still there to remedy them and help lay more practical and acceptable new policing foundations. MPs can do so during the forthcoming committee stage where it will be subjected to line-by-line scrutiny and open to amendment.

The most serious weakness in the 1970 Police Act was that it did not define rigorously enough the individual role and duties of the Secretary of State, the Police Authority and the Chief Constable and the interaction between them. This enabled successive Chief Constables to ignore and defy the Authority and rendered the notion that the police were effectively accountable to the community nothing more than a polite fiction.

Ever since the process of police reform was heralded in a discussion paper in 1994, it has been common ground that this gap would be remedied in the long-awaited legislation. But it is not. The Bill merely states: "There shall continue to be a body corporate known as the Police Authority for Northern Ireland."

What it must go on to say is: "whose principal duties are: to protect the operational independence of the Chief Constable and the Royal Ulster Constabulary from undue political direction or partisan influence or control; promote public confidence in and co-operation with the police service; ensure that the views of the Secretary of State, statutory or otherwise, and the entire community are obtained and taken into consideration in the provision of the police service; and, through oversight of the planning, delivery and financial processes, hold the Chief Constable and the police service to account for the efficiency, effectiveness and impartiality of the policing service".

Matching amendments, defining the roles of the Secretary of State and Chief Constable in synchronised terms, is the essential cornerstone for any new era of policing.

Furthermore the Bill should be amended to give the Police Authority statutory power to ensure that the Northern Ireland Police Service is not only "efficient and effective" but "acceptable and impartial". This would underpin the community role of the Authority and give it powerful leverage to influence, through training and practice, the internal "canteen culture" of the force which the Chief Constable recently described as "a white, male Protestant preserve".

Maintaining this in a deeply divided society will only condemn the RUC to another 75 years of controversy. It will also intensify the alienation that exists between it and large sections of the Catholic community and is growing dangerously between the RUC and many Protestants.

Although the Bill proposes to give the Secretary of State powers to make regulations about the way the Authority does its work, it would be more satisfactory if these were considered by parliament and given the force of statute. Three major elements therefore need to be incorporated.

The Police Authority should be obliged by law to hold its monthly meetings in public and publish detailed minutes in line with procedures that are long established elsewhere in the United Kingdom to protect certain confidential matters, such as personnel and discipline cases.

It is a major failing of the Bill that it does not tackle the damaging lack of openness and transparency in the way that the Authority operates. "Security" has long been the excuse for all the secrecy, but that is a dubious alibi and one that must be challenged if this legislation is to enjoy any credibility and help to achieve its objectives.

The Authority should also be obliged by law to hold at least one annual, open public meeting to provide an opportunity for members to be publicly questioned, and held to account themselves, about the work of the Authority.

It is not enough merely to charge the Authority with making arrangements to obtain the views of the public about policing. Such views should be made one of the statutory factors to be taken into account in formulating policing policy.

The obligation to raise and service a network of Community Police Liaison Committees, with at least one in every district council area, should also be put on a statutory footing. Their terms of reference, role and composition, requiring a balance between elected representatives and delegates from a wide range of apolitical community interests, should be incorporated into regulations associated with this Bill.

One of the new proposals in the Bill enables local councils to question the Authority about policing and, indeed, summon Authority members to attend and account for themselves. It would be worthwhile, in addition, to impose a duty on the Authority to hold a formal meeting with each district council in alternate years. With 26 councils this would mean the Authority meeting about one council every month, and completing the cycle every two-year period.

Chris Ryder served on the Police Authority for Northern Ireland from 1994 to 1996. He is the author of The RUC: A Force Under Fire