Another key piece of legislation mentioned frequently in the report was the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which sought to create a new balance between the powers of the police and the rights of suspects. Its operation had been regularly reviewed and revised since it had been enacted in 1986. It dealt with police powers, the rights of persons in police detention, police discipline and complaints against the police.
8. Under the Act, four codes of practice in connection with police powers of search and seizure of property, detention, treatment, questioning and identification of suspects had also came into force. Failure on the part of an officer to comply with any provision of a code was a disciplinary offence. A code governing the tape-recording of police interviews had also been issued. Recently, all the codes had been reviewed and revised codes had come into force in April 19916 thus strengthening the safeguards of persons in police detention,
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9. The Government had recently announced proposals for introducing changes in prisons on the basis of recommendations made by Lord Justice Woolf in a report prepared following serious disturbances in six prisons in England and Wales in 1990. The Government had now published a White Paper setting out a comprehensive and coordinated programme of change and accepting the central proposition of the Woolf report that security and control had to be balanced with justice and humanity. Henceforth, there would be better security and control of prisoners; more purposeful programmes under which prisoners would work towards the cost of their upkeep and be sent out with a better likelihood of contributing to the community; and better relations between staff and prisoners so that trouble could be averted and difficulties resolved.
10. The reforms to which the Government attached particular importance and on which it was taking immediate action were the ending, by late 1994, of the practice of slopping out because of the absence of integral sanitation in cells; a code of standards for accommodation, programmes and facilities to be provided in all prisons; and the appointment of an independent complaints adjudicator by the end of 1992.
11. His country's report referred in a number of places to the Children Act 1989, which had entered into force in October 1991 and constituted the most fundamental twentieth-century reform of United Kingdom legislation relating to the care, protection and upbringing of children. It brought together for the first time both public and private law covering the entire field of care for children and was based on the principle that the welfare of the child must always be the first consideration in decisions by the courts and local authorities. It included new measures to help protect children from abuse and established specific requirements for the setting up of complaints procedures for persons in residential homes and for the monitoring of residential establishments.
12. Terrorism continued to be a real threat in the United Kingdom, as was evident from recent bombing attacks on the Government itself, as well as on passengers at railway stations, and especially in Northern Ireland. While it was still necessary to keep in place exceptional measures contained in the Prevention of Terrorism Act and in the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisiona Act, there were valuable safeguards, including the annual debate in Parliament