Biggus,
The defence budget you mention is the Navy's slice of a small pie to do with as they see fit. The fact that the carriers had already been "budgeted" for by early retirement of vessels, reduced buy of others etc, was conveniently overlooked by the axe wielder and, it seems, all of the light blue naysayers on this thread/forum. You seem to lump the MPA loss into the Navy's area of responsibility rather too conveniently as well, when the other threads point to the Navy grasping the nettle and possibly coming up with the funds for some sort of replacement. The last time I detached to Kinloss the Nimrods had "Royal Air Force" on the side.
All the arguments against carriers are almost rabid in their assertions that carriers have no place in modern warfare and we couldn't "ping" a submarine with our Merlins if the thing was on the surface with the crew sunbathing. It pains me to say it (as an engineer) but the aircrew acually do know a thing or two about finding submarines, and don't forget where a few of your Nimrod guys came from when we cut back on the MK 6 Seakings, so they must be fairly useful?
None of the carriers supporters say that we don't need airbases, that is always the preferred option IF the airbase is;
1/ close
2/ well protected
3/ easy to supply
4/ has it's own accom (sorry couldn't resist)
5/ permanent after the conflict (preferably)
If not then what we say is, a carrier is a damn useful bit of kit in just about every way you can imagine;
1/ Offence (maritime and land support)
2/ Defence (shipping, home shores, dependencies, etc)
3/ Disaster relief (After recent events, need I say more)
4/ Political persuasion (Its worked before, trust me)
We all know about the shifting of Australia to prove CAP and the dropping of a bomb on the Falklands at "any" cost to prove a point, but that, as they say, is history. The rest of the developed world is apparently looking to bigger, more capable navies, with (not surprisingly) aircraft carriers figuring heavily in that build up. Lets at least give ourselves a chance of protecting our interests and our allies.
Cheers now