UPDATED: David Henderson - Found guilty.

[Feedback]

Surely it's important in a court of law, otherwise why have commercial licenses at all?

a CPL allows the holder to fly for remuneration whereas if you have a PPL you cannot. The rules are quite clear but holding a CPL doesn't make you immediately a better pilot than a PPL. Quite a lot of CPL holders don't do much flying, certainly if they are instructors.

let me put it this way, if there was no money exchanged, then there would be no question of the rating held by Ibbotson (other than his lapsed night rating).

[chrisp_1927]

a CPL allows the holder to fly for remuneration whereas if you have a PPL you cannot. The rules are quite clear but holding a CPL doesn't make you immediately a better pilot than a PPL. Quite a lot of CPL holders don't do much flying, certainly if they are instructors.

let me put it this way, if there was no money exchanged, then there would be no question of the rating held by Ibbotson (other than his lapsed night rating).

It may not make you immediately a better pilot, but the bar for a cpl is a lot higher than for a ppl. Both in terms of a harder test, a requirement to have a lot more hours as pilot in command, to have an instrument rating etc.
Couple that with the fact that the theory qualifications are also a lot more in depth. You need to do cpl theory at the least, although most will do the ATPL(airline theory) exams instead. Even if it hadn't improved his flying to a huge extent, maybe the extra qualifications would have helped him to come to better decisions about when to fly.