Good grief lgw warrior, for the 1000th time, this debate is just whether or not the manual says one thing and we do another. THAT'S ALL !!! HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY, POSSIBLY NOT UNDERSTAND THAT !!
We all know what we do in practice and may I inform you that whilst descending, as cleared, in a procedural ILS going in and out of cloud, we suddenly received a TCAS RA as a light aircraft flew straight through the procedure pattern below us. Just after the RA warning we then saw the aircraft and judged that the chance of hitting him without the RA was high. The Tower said they knew nothing about him.
So for whatever reasons, near misses do happen. How rare they are is for another debate.
I really hope you never have an incident like I had, but if you unfortunately do you will see what I'm going on about !!