The serious side to this is that, very quickly, safety and airworthiness was compromised. I recall one instruction from the Lynx IPT, issued no doubt in sheer exasperation, that transmission spares should be bought on Local Purchase Order from Halfords, and sod the Mil Std.
Another factor was that many of the scrapped spares were being held at 4th line as "buffer stock", for the sole purpose of effecting a swift turn round time. Some aircraft equipment was in such short supply that repair contracts stipulated seven days TRT; but to achieve this the MoD had to supply HUGE quantities of buffer stock. I'm thinking in particular of Hercules. Of course, scrapping this stock meant the TRT shot up to about 18 months. (Not only was the instruction issued to scrap the spares, but SMB also demanded they be immediately quarantined to avoid the company having access before they could be scrapped. And then had the cheek to demand action against companies and PE project managers when they couldn't satisfy the inevitable high priority demands). The (natural) reaction of, e.g. Lyneham, was to attempt repairs which they had no experience of, and for which they had no means of verifying the repair (which automatically breaches airworthiness rules).
All this went in one ear and out the other among suppliers and BCs. We got no help from our bosses in PE. You do the right thing and elevate through line management, but when the AD says "This is political dynamite, forget it" you have a choice. Do the right thing and ignore the instructions, or waste the money knowing safety is at risk. I'm sure some of you think I was wrong in going for the former.......