The whole question about controlling or touching the controls is simply a red herring. I have completed many flights solo IFR IMC in GA aircraft with no autopilot where thanks to the conditions, I trimmed the aircraft and simply sat back and monitored everyting for quite a period of time. Was I controlling the aircraft?
As soon as one leaves the training environment where it is guaranteed to be "IMC" for the flight, the whole idea of logging instrument flight time is more than a bit wolly. On the majority of IFR flights there will be periods of VMC flight.
It is always going to be a judgement issue- "I think that we were actual IMC for about 30 minutes on that flight" and so on. Thus it is never going to be an exact science and one could argue that the CAA's mothod of using a factor of 4 if claiming instrument flight time to have the instrument instruction removed leaves it more open to "parker pen flying" than the simple 200 hours IFR that JAA requires.
Regards,
DFC