I have to agree totally with what IO540 says. The only people I would recomend to get an NPPL are those that can't pass the JAA medical.
If one wants to remove the UK only limitation from an NPPL then start flying Microlights - some cruise at 140Kt these days and that is a nice speed to take someone across to France!
Everyone who thinks that the NPPL hours are automatically accepted for the JAA-PPL are correct - for the time being. There are moves to have NPPL instructors. When this happens, there will not be the automatic transfer of hours unless the instructor used was a JAA qualified instructor and the JAA sylabus was followed and the training establishment was registered for JAA trainig.
The training hours for the NPPL are less than the PPL - they simply got the PPL sylabus and reduced many of the lessons from 1 hour to 45 minutes. One still has to learn the same exercise so guess how long it is going to take you? - Yes you guessed it - 1hr 15min+
When the JARs arrived, the established UK schools claimed that JAR flying was far more expensive than CAA flying. Thus they hiked up their prices. Of course European and US flying prices remained the same post JAR and the UK schools needed a way of backtracking on price while at the same time saving face.
The result they came up with was the NPPL - they got to advertise lower prices while still charging the inflated prices.
Regards,
DFC