Green/yellow cores are not an "earth" wire unless you do not identify them as being anything else.you can use the "earth" wire as a power conductor in a multicore.
Two negatives and possible maybe in the same sentence - now i am confused.
I presume (a dangerous habit ) that G/Y referred to as an earth wire is a convention.
I can understand where the arguments of single core versus multicore comes from and it makes "logical" sense. Any single G/Y located in a conduit, raceway etc might be assumed to be an earth cable, whereas a sheathed multicore will display no colours until one gets to the open ends, at which point over colouring or ID tags will clarify each core's purpose.