I think you are not reading enough in to the conferences. It strikes me that whatever those at the sharp end think, our illustrious civil service seniors and the politicians have made their decision about the future of SAR. As far as they are concerned, it is not negotiable. What they are doing now is the marketing of the idea - trying to sell it to those at the front line and more importantly to the public. Mr Astbury is the messenger and as such his qualifications (or rather lack of aviation ones) don't matter.
The success or otherwise of Harmonised SAR lies almost entirely with how the contract is set up and more importantly how it is written. It will be very different to the current one. There has been much said about the capability of the future SAR system. To compare the future with the current MCA contracts is folly since the current situation requires Maritime SAR only.