Hmmmm. Usually when Alan ("It wasn't me, I didn't see anything when I was 1SL") West pipes up, its often best to assume the opposite. He had a fine combat record, less so on achieving Flag rank (IMO at least) and definitely not once out.
In this particular case, the issue is not the carriers, rather an overall personnel crisis that has been brewing for some time, coupled with some "interesting" material state and industrial capacity limitations. This leads to an attractive option for budgeting staffs, where particular ships have been run on far too long and now require (at least on Babcock planning assumptions) years in dockyard hands to make good their material state. In which case, why not decommission them and use the crews freed up to assuage the recruitment and retention issues? The cause of the personnel shortage is not "the carriers" despite the desperate hopes of some and their equally desperate attempts to link Nelsons frigates with todays. If only they knew what they were talking about.....