I think I'm totally out of date on tribunal stuff. In my father's judicial days, he used to chair the old Social Security Appeal tribunals (or were they 'panels'?) Anyway, they were back in the dark ages of the DSS and then DHSS. I've no idea whether they were supposed to be adversarial, but he certainly described them in a way that indicated that they were, besides which he wasn't into anything inquisitorial, he liked to play judge as between two parties, whether that was sitting on umpteen different sorts of panels, tribunals, courts or whatever, or whether it was in any other activity he engaged in. For those that are familiar with Berne's "The Games People Play", his favourite game that he devoted his life to was "Let's you and him fight." Never a happier man than when he had two people or groups standing or sitting in front of him arguing about something and him being able to make the decision.
So I'm working on the basis of something from childhood. Not exactly a good basis for understanding anything modern, is it? After all, if I used that model for everything, I might think the benefits system still had some sort of fairness, mightn't I? >crying<