There's currently a fair amount of MPs who are calling for defence spending to be increased, and there's currently a Defence Review in progress ... I think some politicans and senior officers are hoping that they might get a bigger chunk of cash soon and are therefore keen to upscale their projects (such as T31) in the hopes of procuring some capable platforms (unlike with a £250m per ship price tag!).

However, ever the pessimist, I think the upcoming Defence review will be another capability slash, based primarily on saving money, not capability (as always). I never understand how the UK can spend so much on defence and still come up short in comparison with other nations with less to spend but apparently more capable platforms.

T31 is another project that the Govermment can use to say to the clueless general public that we've got X amount of ships on x amount of tasks ... because they know the average joe won't see past the number of hulls, while the armed forces are hollowed-out. The Conservatives used to be the party of Defence but recently I'm not sure they can back that up!