£300 million for Puma 2 is peanuts compared to what we would have paid for SAR-H. Personally I think we would have been better off paying a wee bit more for new Super Pumas or even Blackhawks but we're too far down the road now so let's get the best value for money for that investment.
Meanwhile, let's forget about poor vfm PFI contracts. Why not cobble together any spare grey Merlins, the ex-Danish Mk 3As and a slack handful of Mk3s to constitute a new SAR Force, manned by whatever combination of RN, RAF and CG/civvy. It sounds like a bit of a b@stard fleet but that shouldn't be too much of an issue when you parcel them out into detached flights. Whatever number of Mk 3s are left over after that can constitute the future CHF. That's a redistribution of assets that we already own with little additional investment to prep the cabs for the SAR role.
Theoretically that still leaves the previously quoted £6 Billion for SAR-H to raid to pay for x-number of new Chinooks to bolster the future RAF SH Force.
If you want to save even more money then delete Army Wildcat. The Pre-SDSR rhetoric was all about dropping so-called Cold War equipment. Why then are we spending £1 Billion on an aircraft that is only good for targetting units of the 3rd Soviet Shock Army as it pours through the Fulda Gap, a job that the Apache can already do perfectly well for itself, thank you very much.
Do we still have GEMS? I'm sure I'm worth a few quid for that little lot....