Mick
I admit you are also entitled to hold your view, and I can see how you could interpret things the way you have, even though I feel strongly this is an incorrect interpretation. In this respect I suppose I should give you the benefit of the doubt about whether you sought to mislead readers - so apologies if I did not above.
There is potential for alot of confusion in this area and I think a misconception that demonstrating ALARP is the same as saying something is totally safe. This is absolutely not the case. The best example of why this is not so is probably the Harrier, which whilst it can be regarded as having ALARP safety, it is by design a fundamentally quite hazardous piece of kit (1 very high performance engine, fast jet, etc.). You can argue its ALARP however as to make it safer (e.g. add another engine for redundancy etc.) is not in any way practical, and the risks are tolerable with migitations (ejection seat, careful where you fly it etc.).
I'd be interested to know what background your 2 experts have and whether they really think the QinetiQ report is really suggesting something at odds with what Des said.