To be fair shunter, he has a point the basic IMCR is not designed for extended flight in IMC it is a pop up and down.
You have shafted your own argument by pointing out that someone who has honed his skills can be a safe and competent IFR pilot. There are a few ways to do this, go out and fly a lot and practice practice practice or go out and do an Ir where you will fly a lot and practice practice practice. The end result is the ability to fly on instruments but one gets to do it an all classes of airspace the other is VERY limited.
I would be very interested to hear about your experience with current IR rated pilots though, please share.
And I would suggest that you don't confuse the very simple test standards of the IMCR with those of the IR. Including the fact that no IMCR examiner will test to IFR minima only to the CAA recommended DA/DH. Therefore no IMCR pilot can claim they have been tested to the same standards as an IR pilot. They may with practice be able to fly to minima, although it would be interesting to see how many IMCR pilots have actually flown an approach ti IR minima in reality (rather than just claiming it), when I had an IMCR I flew a thousand hours on it using it as a mini IR and can count the number of MINIMA approaches I did on 1 finger..........