I'm not sure anyone in the know will blame the gentleman concerned. He left the RAF and went to work for a private company in the full knowledge of the IPT, which he is perfectly allowed to do. If he used his knowledge of the SARH requirements to make sure his company's bid met those requirements than that seems quite sensible for both sides...
Would SARH have delivered a capable, reliable and safe (i.e. professional) SAR capability? I think it undoubtedly would as the many civilian SAR operators in the UK demonstrate, but I am not so sure - in the long run - it would have been in the best interests of the military rotary community or the taxpayer.
Some will argue from a resources perspective that SARH was the only deal in town and that the money isn't available for a Plan B... The only reason it isn't (right now) is because of the Government's obsession with PFIs to hide capital spending off balance sheet. Ultimately, the taxpayer pays and PFIs are expensive in the long run, both because of the higher cost of capital to private companies and because of the need to make a profit. Getting rid of RAF and RN SAR doesn't free up resources for the MoD, it just involves a transfer of resources to the DfT.
Others will argue from a military perspective that SAR has no place in an expeditionary military. Although the aircraft haven't deployed recently, the same is not true of the personnel. And then there is MCT, the paramedics, flexibility, morale
.
So with the faff over new Chinook, Merlin and SARH, perhaps there is an opportunity to properly analyse the cost of doing this differently. When we are no longer in Afghanistan, the taxpayer is going to value a SAR capability in the UK a lot more than deployable SH (rightly or wrongly). And what the masses want, politicians will provide (or be too scared to cut). If we could use this opportunity to develop a SAR capability that can also deploy in some useful roles we might do ourselves a favour.
Anyway, I've been arguing this to whoever has been silly enough to listen for years and I think I'm in a minority.