The today programme had an item on the new website they're using to replace the facilitating list - it doesn't sound like they're abandoning the idea that some A-levels open more doors than others, they're just using technology to do it in a more flexible way.
While you can niggle with the details of it, I think the facilitating list was a good thing, and I hope the website will be too, because it made public knowledge that was already widespread among middle class schools and parents, but which often wasn't known by less privileged students. It isn't obvious or intuitive that history a-level is more valued by top law departments than law A-level, and keeping that quiet or pretending it isn't so only benefits middle class students.
I'd like to see something similar for degrees themselves. I found it depressing to see how many first-generation students were doing, say, law or business studies at a low rated university when they could have done an arts subject at a much better rated university, because they thought (falsely) that top jobs/graduate schemes/etc would obviously value a 'useful' degree. Law is a particular problem because it has a cultural prestige and an expectation of employability that leads to big disappointment for students from low ranked universities, especially when it turns out they'd have to pay for their own training to actually be a lawyer.