It’s a big company, just about any policy on anything at BA gets referred to the lawyers, and not just the big issues...
Re automation: If an aircraft goes off the end because of a handling stuff up such as being a bit fast on the approach the lawyers are concerned that somebody in Flight Ops will get dragged up in court to explain why the company didn’t make the use of Mr Boeing or Alphonse Airbus’s autothrottle/autothrust mandatory.
Similar with commuting...The theory goes that “legal” has hinted that BA itself might be held to blame if an individual uses BA facilitated staff travel to get to work and then is found by the authorities to have breached some aspect of the EASA regs when it comes to fatigue.. So Flight Ops looked hard at those who indulged in “extreme” commuting. However having got such a process in place it appears somebody now feels they now have no choice but to continue drilling down into the data and look in detail at the travel arrangements of absolutely anyone who arrives by way of staff travel into LHR/LGW at any point prior to report (I suspect they don’t feel there a similar need yet to look at those who drive or travel in by other airlines because BA don’t directly facilitate such travel...and as yet BA don’t have access to that data.)
Ultimately and has rightly been said you do get the impression that often the company think pilots are not to be trusted. I am sure those who say that there are worse outfits are correct but as I mentioned earlier BA can be a funny old outfit and it is completely process driven...Now in my experience most of us I think successfully work around or through that aspect of the operation, especially when away from Mission Control, but I’d agree with the comment that it is certainly “buyer beware”...