Around town, a 300tdi will quite happily live without the lift pump. It's when you start climbing some hills though that you have a problem.
When the D1s were relatively new, most times a failed lift pump was found was when trying to bleed the fuel system after a filter change on a service. The car came in running perfectly well even with a dead lift pump.
It must be noted that 99% of D1s here for service were just shopping cars though.

