Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins]

My Lords, I thoroughly enjoyed the Games and felt very proud indeed to be a Londoner. I would question only whether we took seriously enough the commitment to deliver a multilingual Games, and consequently whether we have short-changed ourselves on this aspect of the Olympic legacy. I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages. I thank everybody responsible for the most brilliant staging of Shakespeare in other languages at the Globe as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

My contention is that if, as Olympic hosts, we had made more connections between the official language services during the Games and language teaching in schools, we could have matched young people’s enthusiasm for the Games with an injection of new enthusiasm for learning foreign languages, and perhaps even seen an increase in the number of teenagers sticking with languages after the age of 14.

This is such an important legacy issue because the lack of language skills in the UK is currently damaging our economy and competitiveness. The employability and social mobility of our young people are seriously limited as they compete for jobs in a global labour market. Employers are recruiting from overseas because neither school-leavers nor graduates from the UK have the language skills, and the cultural knowledge that goes with them, to meet the needs of business. Robust evidence shows that lack of language skills is a barrier to export growth.

Of course, the irony is that London is the most multilingual city in the UK and Newham is the UK’s most multilingual borough. Dozens of local schoolchildren could have easily spotted the embarrassing mistake on the sign at the entrance to the Olympic Park, which said “Welcome to London” in various languages but the Arabic section was written back to front. This faux pas in an otherwise hugely successful international event led to Britain’s inability to cope with foreign languages being ridiculed not only in our own media but in press stories in the US, South Africa, China and the Middle East.

I first asked an Oral Question about the steps the Government were taking to prepare for a multilingual Olympics in December 2008. Of course, it was a different Government then, although I do not believe that the present one would have taken a significantly different line. The Minister of the day told me that the Government,

“are working to ensure that the Games leave a lasting legacy of language development”.

He also said that,

“we will need to draw on the vast range of communities that can offer language skills to the wide variety of visitors whom we will receive”.—[Official Report, 16/12/08; col. 731.]

Unfortunately, this proactive attitude was not really followed through. We even had to rely on the French embassy to help to fund a translator for the announcements in French during the Games. Why could that not have been part of the mainstream budget? It would even have been a great challenge for local schools.

There were several language projects but LOCOG seems to have regarded them as marginal. The Welcoming the World programme helped more than 60 companies with translating signage and training staff, but its funding from the LDA ceased in April 2010 and LOCOG declined to pick it up. Similarly, the Routes into Languages programme and the Capital L group worked with schools and colleges on the importance of languages and the opportunities offered by the Games. However, again, their funding ran out and they found very little support from LOCOG.

The Get Set programme might tell a different story, and I should like to ask the Minister specifically whether he can give me an update on the Written Answer that I got on 13 December 2011. I was told that LOCOG’s education programme, Get Set, included a small number of modern foreign language applications and that an annual evaluation was being conducted. I should be interested to know—later in writing if the Minister does not have this with him today—what, if any, positive results were generated.

What I know of the language services during the Games seems to have worked well—for example, the fact that the first tier of drivers for the IOC and Olympic family was allocated according to language skills, and personal observation reported to me suggests that this was effective. On the other hand, it was very difficult to find out what else was being done and whether community resources were being tapped. I was told that the chief interpreter and the head of language services for the Games were too busy to meet the all-party group, even though the noble Lord, Lord Coe—chairman of LOCOG and surely busier than either of them—was kind enough to come to one of our meetings. I am very grateful to him for that.

I hope that both the noble Lord, Lord Coe, and the Government will now ensure that the importance of language skills forms a clear part of the official report on the London Games, as well as featuring in any vision or strategy for their legacy. I fear that an opportunity was missed to showcase London as a richly multilingual venue, even though we know that this is a major factor for global companies deciding where to locate their headquarters. More than 200 languages are spoken by schoolchildren in London, yet most of their languages are not formally taught, examined or accredited, despite being badly needed in the field of public service interpreting in courts, hospitals and police stations. In 2008, the then Minister told me on the Floor of the House that his department wanted,

“to ensure that the Olympic Games provide an opportunity to show young people in the area the advantage of developing language skills. That is what we are seeking to achieve”.—[Official Report, 16/12/08; col. 732.]

Can the Minister tell me today to what extent the Government judge this to have been achieved and how it will be followed up in future?

To conclude on an optimistic note, I spoke to several volunteers in the Olympic Park who told me that they were now off to learn Portuguese so that they could volunteer again in Rio.