MR David Cook has accused the British government and the Northern Ireland Police Authority of "passing the buck" on the important issue of symbols in the RUC. Mr Cook was dismissed from the authority earlier this year.
Addressing the Irish Association in the Mansion House, Dublin on Wednesday on the need for a police authority in the North, Mr Cook stressed the "absolute need" for an authority in any possible constitutional devolutionary situation in the future.
Mr Cook was chairman of the police authority from July 1994 to March 1996, when he was sacked by the Northern Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, after the authority passed motions of no confidence in him and his colleague, Mr Chris Ryder.
This followed differences within the authority over proposals which Mr Cook indicated were designed to increase co-operation with the RUC among all sections of Northern society.
Yesterday Mr Cook said he and Mr Ryder were trying to encourage "intelligent evolutionary changes in policing practices and policies on the ground." They proposed that the authority give a lead in finding an accommodation to address the anxieties 9f both sides of the community in regard to symbols of policing.
"For that reason we went to some trouble to formulate proposals concerning the name, badge and uniform of the police the enhancement of the neutral working environment in police stations and in the service generally the oath of office, and the flying of the Union Flag on police stations," Mr Cook said.
After he and Mr Ryder had gone, the authority attempted to pass the Union Flag buck to the government. Other changes were made to the proposals which had the effect of "dramatically reducing the value of the accommodations which we had proposed".
They now knew, from the White Paper just published, that the government did not propose to do anything "with the buck, which the authority passed to it".
Great care was needed in addressing these contentious issues. If two institutions the police authority and government passed the buck, "we are entitled to ask how much confidence we can have in them."
Arguing for a strong, independent police authority, standing impartially between police and politicians, he said responsibility for governing the force in any society should not, on principle, be concentrated in the hands of central government.
In Northern Ireland's case this involved the Secretary of State or perhaps, in the future, an assembly minister for justice.
"We must not create a policing framework, especially in a divided society, where the police service is at the beck and call of political parties where a minister of justice or an assembly committee could direct or deploy it for political or partisan advantage where officers would feel obliged to political masters in deciding how to do their job or where they were dependent on political patronage for promotion," Mr Cook said.
The decentralisation of part of the responsibility for police governance should involve "an increase in democratic practice and local accountability" and should be to a body in which elected politicians at local government level had an important, though not controlling, role.
The authority should be separate from, and independent of, central government. It should be representative of the community as a whole.
Any new legislation must render the police accountable to the community, he said.
Meanwhile, the chief constable should be accountable to an effective authority and not to the central parliamentary institution alone. That system had led to confusion and problems when the institution was Stormont, he added.