There seems to be universal acclaim for the Haddon-Cave Report
Not in this quarter. Many of his conclusions are not evidence based. Some of his claims are arrant nonsense. Some are quite deliberate deceits, because he used them to knowingly name and blame people who were desperately trying to deal with a situation they, and their predecessors, inherited. He knew these people were completely innocent, especially General Sir Sam Cowan.
Notably, he claimed implementation of the airworthiness system was fine before 1998. He completely ignored written evidence from the MoD's own auditors (EAC Liverpool and DIA Bath) that a 1987 policy issued by AMSO led directly to the Chief Engineer beginning a 3 year rundown of the system in 1991. (The "savings at the expense of safety" he repeated, but without mentioning no savings were necessary in the first place if the regulations had been followed by those he protected).
He also completely ignored almost all the ART reports, which independently confirmed the EAC and DIA reports. He did mention the Nimrod ART, but didn't say that, in 1996-98 it repeated the failings noted in the 1992 Chinook ART report. Why did he omit this? Because to include it would mean he would have to push back his 1998 date to, at least, 1990.
But hey, why pay any attention to something the RAeS host? As their main man said in an e-mail to me, he considers Air Safety to be "none of my or the Society's business" (5th October 2012).