I confess to having been involved in staffing the closure of MEDAs, and voting 'Yes' ... simply on the 'emergency' aspect being generally adequately covered by civil airfields.
The cost of operating a MEDA was significant in personnel terms. It required, back then, 5.25 ATCOs per position to provide H24 cover ... and a MEDA would require 2 positions [one Local and one Approach]. That's effectively 10 ATCOs to be paid for, even before you start on Assistants and the Ops and Engineering side. On normal day/evening shifts, you would need about 3 [=6].
And what did those MEDA staff do on their night shifts? Absolutely nothing. The out-of-hours use of MEDAs was microscopic.