Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012: Olympic Truce

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My noble friend makes a valid point. The core of the Olympic Truce was to promote the Olympic ideals, to use sport to help promote dialogue and reconciliation, especially between nations in conflict. We could perhaps look at future sporting events to see how that could be applied to, say, Rugby League, football and various other World Cups and world events.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, has the noble Baroness considered applying the wider ideals of the Olympic Truce, such as good behaviour and citizenship, along with inclusive school sport and the inspirational nature of the Games as something that could be considered a true legacy of the Olympics?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The noble Baroness makes a valid point. We are promoting a number of different ideas around the Olympics. They are not directly connected to the Olympic Truce but seek to involve today’s youth in different sports programmes. There is the Get Set programme sponsored by LOCOG, for example, and a project involving young people making films around the theme of truce. A lot of ideas are floating around at the moment and, as we get closer to the Games, we will need to pull them all together so that we derive a concrete legacy from the Olympics.