This chapter presents a critical and analytical history of custody visiting, centring on the policy issues. The story begins in 1980, when Michael Meacher MP made the first proposals for custody visiting. In 1981 the Scarman Report included a recommendation for a statutory scheme of custody visiting, which the government declined to implement. Custody visiting operated from 1984 on a rather haphazard and unofficial basis, and was known as ‘lay visiting’; the current statutory scheme of ‘independent custody visiting’ was initiated in 2003. This chapter analyses both the proposals of the proponents of custody visiting and the policies of the government and the police, and demonstrates how the powerful influence of the police impacted on the original regulatory purpose and orientation of custody visiting, and on the independence of the visitors.

Michael Meacher MP

In 1980, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee was considering deaths in police custody. There was much public concern stemming from the media allegations relating to high-profile cases, and between 1970 and 1979 there had been 274 such deaths. It was in evidence to this committee that Michael Meacher MP made a proposal for custody visitors. He said that, as a deterrent against the possibility of assault against those held in custody, the Home Secretary should set up, on an experimental basis in half a dozen areas, a panel of visitors with rights of access to police station cells for unannounced visits, or with minimum practical notice. The visitors should take statements from detainees who had allegations to make of police violence against them; should seek to validate the truth or otherwise of the statements; and should make regular reports to the Home Secretary and to the police authority of the area (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 1979‒1980: memorandum (n 8) D1).

In answer to questions from the chairman of the committee, Mr Meacher said that he thought a group of two or three visitors should always include a lawyer; and that his suggestion did not show distrust in the police, but where people were in the power of the authorities and out of sight and hearing of members of the public, as was the case in mental institutions, these safeguards were valuable (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 1979‒1980: minutes of evidence, 421‒422).