When you actually read the minutes of evidence, what is breathtaking is the sheer scale of technical illiteracy (some of it wilful) of the interrogators. Amjad Hussein comes across as giving very clear factual answers which some in the committee struggle desperately with.
The Beeb article is (as ever) ill-informed and inflammatory - a classic case being this exchange below...
But the committee's Labour chairman Margaret Hodge says the final cost could end up being £12bn over budget. "Whilst today we're reporting predicted costs for this of £6.2bn, my fear is that that's not the end of the story," she says. "Indeed one insider said to me that the cost could escalate up to an amazing £12bn for this project.". I assume they think this means the project started with a budget of zero.......
They also repeat the myth that the ships were saved from defence cuts under the coalition government because, it said, it would cost more to cancel the projects than proceed with them.. In actual fact, the decision to proceed with PoW was driven by the cancellation clause, NOT the whole programme. SDSR was quite clear that carrier strike capability was required.
Lost in all this, is the fact that the build is going very well and that the ships are hitting pretty much all their construction milestones. The "capability in 2031" argument is (as ever) not technically based, but programming/scheduling, which can be changed - albeit at a price.