Yep i tried it, and for me, it didn't work. There was another thread on the subject somewhere.

To cut a long story short, I had two working valves, one which came as a spare when I bought the car.

First off I simply unplugged the EGR that was on the Defender. I drove around for a couple of weeks with no MIL. Then I removed the gears on the spare and changed over the EGR's. But after 3 cycles of running the valve with no gears the MIL light came on.
So i put the original back in, plugged it in and after 3 cycles the MIL light went out. I then unplugged it, but the MIL light came back after 3 cycles.

In the end I got a remap from Pete at BAS, with the EGR deleted. I then blanked off the EGR.