The RAeS seminar referred to was actually a mixture of opinion. That might not be totally surprising because one assumes the seminar was organized to produce a balanced perspective.
The seminar highlighted that the use of the accident investigator reports in the UK varies across mature aviation nations and there is no clear consensious (in fact I think there was mirth on the lawyers side that they in fact argue the points around this issue depending upon which side of the argument they find themselves on case by case..) and secondly that the focus of thinking was with commercial aviation.
Arguments that concern themselves with pilot unions, employers, witnesses from other parts of the same organization, whistleblowers, airline bodies, aviation manufacturers, cockpit voice and flight data recorders are almost exclusively the domain of commercial air transport; as is the thinking that surrounds initiatives such as ‘Just Culture’.
So to relate that to a GA environment and then suggest that people might not understand wider aviation safety issues is probably quite arrogant because actually almost none of the thinking around this process unambiguously address that sector.
Not least of which is the fact that when a piece of engineering work has been done by the AAIB it surely makes good sense to be able to take point of fact from their work rather than having to fund a secondary investigation that, as Prof. Braithwaite suggested in his presentation, should inevitably come to the same conclusions.
In that context why not use details of an AAIB report, where those same details would become apparent were another investigation be engaged by some other body?
Of course you might argue that the other body might not be granted the same access to certain material of evidence but that would just lead to having an official AAIB report publishing certain facts that then become the elephant in the room and contradictory to this:
‘Anything that undermines the AAIB’s ability to obtain truthful information promptly would be detrimental to public safety and so contrary to the public interest.’
Surely it is also detrimental to public safety and contrary to public interest if there is no consequence to identifiable issues?