I retired from commercial flying some three years ago. Not long before I hung my boots up, I was discussing with our Training Manager the lack of manual flying required in order to complete an LPC as per JARs compared with the old days.
He made the statement that it was perfectly possible under JARs for a captain to pass an LPC without ever touching the controls!
Since LPCs are nowadays supposed to be conducted in a quasi-LOFT scenario, then it is perfectly reasonable for a captain, just for example, to get the F/O to fly the 3-engine ILS and G/A since that is what the company SOPs demand (RVR less than 1500 metres = a monitored approach).
However, when I asked my Training Manager if he would actually sign a captain's licence who had never touched the controls he admitted that he would not. As a TRI/TRE, I sure as hell would not!
So it is that we have to "cheat" by failing autopilots and F/O's instruments etc just to ensure that we can see whether a cptain can still fly or not.
Under the Old Queen, we had a four hour LOFT slot (which was invaluable). Then we had a Base Check/IR which was an intensive handling exercise full of unrelated failures and was therefore, a pretty unreal exercise but was great for assessing ability to deal with problems.
Now we have the same four hour LOFT exercise (the contents of which are published three years in advance) and then we have an LPC which is supposed to be LOFT-related, but because of the problems as related above, ends up by being pretty well about as realistic as its predecessor.
I cannot wait to see what EASA comes up with.