Squidlord:
Perhaps inadvertently wrongly expressed but this is definitely not the answer. The MAA is a regulator and the very last thing you want is to remove responsibility for safety away from the operator to the regulator. See Cullen, Robens, reports, etc.
I'm not for one moment saying that responsibility for safety be removed from anyone, because "Flight Safety Concerns You" as we well know (or should do!). Perhaps in turn my riposte to JTO was poorly expressed in merely quoting back his words to him rather than more precisely making my point. That point is well made by tuc, i.e. that the enforcement required of a regulator must be independent to ensure full compliance with its regulations. Without that safeguard the regulations can be, and were, ignored and safety suffer. Even so safety is still the responsibility of everyone, from AC2 to ACM in the RAF as well as their counterparts in the other Armed Forces and the Civil Service. That it suffered so dramatically and tragically, when illegal orders to ignore the Regulations came down the CoC, is an indictment of all those who failed to disobey them. An easy thing to say, I know, but:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
See Edmund Burke!