Spoke to Dave Gibb at the CAA. Very nice chap, quite happy for me to remain anonymous whilst we discussed this 'hypothetical' (Ahem!) situation.
His interpretation of the rules seems to be exactly the same as this thread, namely that 'any task' that has to be done at 'the behest' of the company before a flight 'must count towards the duty period'.
This clause was designed to prevent managers etc from doing 3 hours in the office prior to a long flight. Since it will be now necessary to increase the length of the pre-flight period to cover the extra work needed, any 06:05 report time (in the old scheme) will now be something like 05:50, bringing it into another period when calculating the max Flight Duty Period (FDP)
If you get a look at the Cap371, page 2, section A, it states that every crew member is responsible for ensuring that they do not operate outside of the max FDPs as approved by the authority through the medium of the company Operations Manual. The fact that somebody in the company has introduced this rule without clearing it with the companys' Ops Inspector does not absolve the individual from blame!
BE WARNED!
If somebody here is clued-up on computers, they might be doing us all a great service by bouncing this info out to other UK (CAA) operators (via the Moderators?) Bit beyond my skill level.
Thanks.