Pegasus,
Whats’s your point? They were no longer operational flying stations and therefore Air did not pick up the bill for them. That means savings on fire, medical, ATC, radar and comms coverage as well as lower infra maintenance costs for the HASs and hangars. Although the Army picked up the routine running costs (as you rightly say, the bases stayed in MOD ownership), they were already committed to the garrison costs for the units that went into both Leuchars and Cottesmore. Units that had to be housed somewhere (I think they were returning from Germany) so there WAS a significant saving to MOD.
As for Harrier carrying Storm Shadow, PDR, it’s all very well having some piccys of a jet carrying drill weapons, but did Harrier have the RTS to carry, fire and jettison the live weapon? Did it have the mission planning tool, the on-board software, the pylons and the test equipment? Were the aircrew and groundcrew trained and have 7 years of experience with loading, flying with, firing, downloading and dealing with weapon misfires? Did it have the same combat radius with the weapon as Tornado did, or did the carrier, (if you presume that it would be used aboard) have the magazine, the lifts, the procedures to handle the weapon? And was Harrier cleared to use the ski-jump with the weapon? Did it have all of the bring-back trials completed and cleared? Maybe Fox wasn’t such a liar after all....
It’s a little pointless trying to re-fight a battle that was decided 8 years ago. But having been there at the time, please do not think that this decision was the work of a single mendacious individual. Lots of debate was had, with various degrees of impartiality, by people who were honestly trying to do their best for Defence at a difficult time. To reduce it to accusations of simple bias and ignorance is purile.