MPL will further reduce piloting skills, airmanship and decision-making skills. The whole point of PIC hours throughout PPL and hour-building towards CPL is that you gain decision-making skills and that you get some experience flying in less-than CAVOK weather, flying into short strips, abroad, etc.
what is the point in learning to fly one way then abandoning it only to learn to fly another
It's called experience. I bet that Captain Pearson (Gimli Glider) wasn't taught how to sideslip a 767 on his type-rating course, yet he knew how to do it and did it properly. Saying that VFR flying is a waste of time can come only from someone without any flying experience - what else is visual or circling approach than pure VFR? Sure there are pilots today that insist on typing even the most basic visual approaches into FMS and then blindly follow the calculated VNAV profile.
I think you should get some real VFR flying from RHS first before considering applying for MPL course. And not to forget, MPL course teaches you how to push buttons on a modern airliner, it doesn't learn you to fly the aircraft. You also won't be subjected to overloading
single-pilot IFR, since most of hours during MPL are done multi-crew.
Besides, Oxford's description of MPL course sounds like this is the best training course ever: they claim you will gain the skills of a commercial pilot in only 90 hours, of which half would be in multi-crew environment. So actually in 45 hours single-pilot flying you will have CPL skills while the rest of us, who by that point (completing PPL) only knew enough so not to kill ourselves during hour-buiding, are bunch of loosers?
Remember, you can ONLY get experience by flight time, not by reading books and playing in a flight simulator....