The powers of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland, which acts as a public watchdog over the RUC, will be strengthened if the Patten Commission on the future of policing accepts its recommendations, the authority's vice-chairman has said.
Prof Herb Wallace also said the authority might be renamed for cosmetic reasons, but members would be relaxed about this as long as it had necessary powers.
There had been speculation that the commission's report, which is due to be published next month, would recommend the dissolution of the authority. The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, has said that the authority was perceived as being weak.
Prof Wallace said the authority's submission to the commission stressed the importance of two key factors. "One is that the police should be protected from partisan political control and the other is that the police must be accountable to the community for the service that they provide.
"It was to secure those two objectives that the Police Authority was established, and in our submission to Patten we have said we could fulfil that function even better if certain changes were made, if the legislation is tightened up and if the authority was made more representative."
On BBC Radio Ulster yesterday, Prof Wallace said if the commission accepted the authority's recommendations and brought forward suggestions to strengthen operational independence and accountability of the RUC, it would be natural to have a body in existence to safeguard those elements.
For cosmetic reasons, the commission might decide to rename the authority. "I would suspect that members would be fairly relaxed about what the body is called as long as there is such a body and as long as it has the necessary powers. But we are determined that we want to see independence from political control and we want to see greater accountability from the police for the service that they provide.
"After all, a very considerable amount of financial resources is devoted to policing, and it's important that they are spent efficiently. So there must be somebody that scrutinises the quality of service and also is able to reassure the community that it is getting value for the money that it spends on policing."
Prof Wallace said he feared the report's recommendations would become a political football, as policing had been for a long time.
He feared people would not be looking to see what was the best kind of police service for the people of Northern Ireland for generations to come, but for short-term political advantage.
In the authority's submission to the commission last December, it said it would vigorously oppose any plan to disband or break up the RUC.
On speculation that the RUC's title might be changed, Prof Wallace said: "It would obviously be supported by some people. It would be resented by a greater number of people, I suspect, and would be extremely hurtful to the many police officers who have courageously served the community over the last 30 years, many of them now living with disability and pain as a result of that."