Repairs to the Palace of Westminster will take up to eight years and £4.3billion. Perhaps Honourable Members and their Lordships should have a new, less costly, home?

I was astonished to learn that much-needed repairs to the Palace of Westminster will take up to eight years and cost between £3billion and £4.3billion.  Would it not be just as well to allow this famous landmark to gracefully fall into a state of picturesque ruin on the banks of the River Thames?  Let it become a monument to those long-gone politicians whose decisions created and then lost an empire on which the sun never set.

I cannot see any reason why the cost of a new home for the Houses of Parliament should not be a fraction of refurbishing the present one.

Consider some of London’s stylish new buildings: The Shard, Europe’s fourth tallest building, cost £435million; 30 St Mary Axe, The Gherkin, cost £200million; The Heron Tower cost £185million – all were completed between 2003 and 2012.  Surely our MPs and Peers could be provided with a suitable building of similar prestige and cost.

While awaiting refurbishment of the old or building of the new, Parliament will have to meet somewhere.  I suggest that, thanks to defence cuts, the spacious hangars of barely used RAF airfields in the West Country, such as Lyneham, Hullavington or even Fairford, could be modified to accommodate meetings of the Commons and the Lords together with their associated entourage.

Transport links would not be a problem with the M4 nearby and there would be the added convenience of having a runway on the doorstep.

Moreover, all that fresh West Country air might do Honourable Members and their Lordships a power of good!