Homeguard,
I agree with everything you say. I work with excellent PPL/BCPL instructors who had plenty of hours and experience prior to doing an FI course. I also qualified under the old CAA system and qualfied as an AFI rather than FI(R). The world has changed. The problem is we are potentially going to have even lower standards if we drop to a 200 hour PPL rather than a 200 hours CPL. Neither of them are ideal. If someone suggested say 500 hours as a minimum for a PPL candidate there may be some logic in the plans as the candidate would have experience to pass on and would be unlikely to be chasing hours for the first airline job.