“FIT for the 21st century,’ and expressions like it, are aching clichés. ‘Modernisation’ for ‘modernisation’s sake’ is a self-fulfilling prophesy, and worthless. ‘New is Good and Old is Bad’ is as false as Orwell’s ‘Four legs good, two legs bad’ in Animal Farm. All of these things are camouflage for woolly thinking, or lack of real justification for a particular action, or often both.

So it was with the debate over whether or not to turf out the 9,000 people who work in Parliament for a period of at least five years, and at a cost of at least £4billion to put the plumbing right. It was passed by a painfully thin 16 votes, and I and most of my grown-up colleagues voted against it.

It risks wrecking the whole mysterious ethos of Parliament, which is the painstaking creation of 1,000 years, replacing it with a bland modernism of the kind which is on display, for example, in the Sottish Parliament in Edinburgh and the European one in Brussels. Neither, if I may be so bold, are exactly best examples of brilliantly functioning legislative assemblies. Like it or lump it, and irrespective of who may be in power, the Parliament in Westminster works brilliantly well. It is the envy of the world.

By and large it produces good law, and holds the Government to account. It works, and a radical rebuild risks wrecking it. They should make do and mend, as most people living in old houses do; patch it up over the long Summer Recess; make it wind and weather-proof. But for heaven’s sake please don’t ‘modernise’ it. I actually rather liked the little robin redbreast flitting around during PMQs this week. It did not harm; but the atmosphere-balanced, high security bubble which will doubtless replace it may well make such harmless episodes impossible.

I feel rather the same way about HS2, which I would have voted against this week, had there been a meaningful vote on it. These vast infrastructure projects develop a momentum of their own, spurred on no doubt by an army of consultants, engineers, architects and builders who will make their personal fortunes out of it. But do we really need HS2? By the time it is operational, will we really want to speed down from the north of England to the south by train? More and more work can be done remotely and online with video conferencing and the rest. We are bringing in robots and artificial intelligence. Will they really feel the need to catch the 7.35 train from Crewe to London? I doubt it. "Build a railway fit for the 21st century.” Oh well, that’s all right then.

I have been hobbling round Parliament this week after a minor operation to my knee assisted by my old Scottish Cromach – or crook. It was made for my late father in 1960 or so by Archie Ronald, an old shepherd from Argyllshire. He spent the winter doing it, and it is as fine a piece of art as you could find anywhere. Show Cromach makers habitually fill in the little natural dimples in the sheep’s horn using wax, to make it look perfect. Archie Ronald refused to do that as he felt it would become a dishonest gift for a Scottish Minister. So it is ‘sincere’ – which comes from the Latin ‘without wax”, Honest and old and true.

The Parliament in Westminster, our transport infrastructure, so much else about our way of life, would be so much better if we were guided by the Cromach - honest and old and true.