London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Baroness Grey-Thompson and Lord Coe

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I sit on several sub-committees of the organising committee for London 2012.

At the moment, I am not convinced that it is appropriate for the Government to be amending the terms and conditions of ticket sales, although it is important that those questions are asked. From my personal Games experience, it is vital that LOCOG remains in control and that it has the ability to refuse entry. The reality is that the vast majority of people will pass through security into the park with no problem whatsoever. I think we would all welcome further communication when the tickets are formally released to the public. When they get their tickets in hand, there is greater understanding of what they are able to do.

If your Lordships look at the option for resale, however, it is incredibly positive. The only Games that have done it before are the Vancouver Winter Olympics. It has not been done by a summer Games and certainly not by a Paralympics, so the opportunity to offer resale and make sure that we have the seats filled to give the best possible experience to the athletes is really welcome. I also expect that LOCOG would be sensible in the implementation of this, to ensure that all the tickets get to the right people.

[Lord Coe]

Prompted by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I should have declared an interest in my previous observations as the chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

If the Committee is comfortable, perhaps I may cluster my observations around the three amendments. I shall deal with the immediate questions of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Will the name be on the ticket? Yes. Is ID required? It is, but it can be a driving licence or a credit card with which you made the original application for the ticket. If you are ill, are you able to hand that ticket on? Yes, you will be able to hand it on to friends and family. That is fine. Picking up on the question of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, I can confirm that it is perfectly acceptable for the purchaser of the tickets not to be present when those to whom he has given the tickets enter the Games.

Perhaps I may put some practicality into this. I accept the observations on both sides of the Committee Room today about the need always to take the public with us, and for them to understand properly the guidance notes. I make the point that in the initial ticket application very detailed guidance was given, but I absolutely accept that we need to take the ticket-purchasing public through that process. As I mentioned a few moments ago, shortly there will be a ticket resale portal in place—probably post Christmas—which will be a good opportunity. Then we have what we describe, for all our client groups, as the journey to the Games, in about June. However, I recognise that we need good communications in place from this point on so that the public understand that the purchaser does not need to be there when, for example, their four children go into the Games.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, was right about the need for proportionality, as we want the ability to investigate suspicious activity. That will be the tip of the £11 million ticket iceberg that we are trying to move through the venues during the Games. Testing is really important and, yes, our volunteers and security teams will be completely practised in getting people in and out of the venues as quickly as possible, in understanding the implications of suspicious behaviour and in being able to prosecute any such behaviour in a sensible way.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I make three points about transfer. There is massive scope for confusion if we are not careful. First, there is the issue of a handling charge for the reissuing of a ticket. There is also the issue of administrative confusion, because we would obviously need to ensure the safe and secure delivery of tickets. Clearly, a destroyed ticket would need to be reissued, and reissued in the name of the purchaser.

The broader point here is very important. This is not a one-off football match. I do not need to rehearse that argument. We have 26 simultaneous world championships taking place over 16 days. Our ability to control the system and to squeeze out the potential for ticket touting is important. We want this to be the greatest show on earth, not the greatest scam on earth. It is important for us to be proportionate. We are very clear that the purchaser does not need to be present and that those tickets can be handed on within a family without fear of prosecution. It is very important that we do not lose control of the system because the reputational damage of this descending into a tout’s charter is serious and goes way beyond this country's ability to deliver the Games.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Coe]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his observations and couple that with my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for her work in this area.

On a broader point, one of the legacies that we seek from the Paralympic Games is our ability to challenge public attitudes in this country to disability. From broader conversations within the Paralympic movement and with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I think that we are fast approaching that point in disability sport where we may have to start redefining it. When you go into a school with Paralympians and have them explain to the so-called able-bodied children that somebody with one leg is scaling the door frame in their classroom and then explaining that probably 99.9 per cent of the population is not able to get within a country mile of that feat, we have a broader issue to discuss. Transforming public attitudes to disability through the Paralympic Games was clearly one of our key legacies.

I want to address specifically some of the practical issues that have been raised. Of course, we all want those people living with disability to have an extraordinary Games experience. We already have 9,000 wheelchair spaces available. They have been sold and those include 9,000 flip-down companion seats. We have an initiative that is partly funded through the private sector, because we place a levy on prestige tickets that allows us to create tickets for key groups such as school children. One of those groups comes under the broader title of Ticket Care, which allows us to provide a free ticket for somebody who is in need of intensive support during that Games experience.

So far, we have 300 Ticket Care tickets funded through the organising committee. As I said, they are aimed at people with high dependencies, so there are 300 carers going to the Games. Some 23,000 tickets have been sold with additional access requirements—seats with the fewest steps and those placed at the end of gangways and rows for fuller accessibility.

To put that into perspective, you can compare that with premiership football grounds. I have two examples. Arsenal’s ground has a capacity of 60,000 seats and there are 275 wheelchair spaces. Manchester United has a stadium that holds 70,000 with 200 wheelchair spaces. Both those clubs have detailed policies and are very aware of accessibility and related issues, so if you look at accessibility for a sell-out session in track and field or any of the venues that you have talked about, I think we are doing pretty well.

We of course have all the other related support systems such as blue badging, extra accessible toilets for disabled spectators and changing places at all our 36 venues, including hoists so that those with special needs can change with dignity.

One of the issues that has been raised with me when I have been wearing any number of hats as a competitor and somebody who is now vice-president of an international federation is that all too often people with visual impairments rely on the rather one-dimensional commentary on the PA. We are working on technology to allow a more informative commentary and a more descriptive process.

Of course, those with hearing impairment seats will be directly in the line of play and nearer the field of play. So there are a number of things that we are doing, and we take this very seriously. It is absolutely enshrined in our commitment to deliver a Paralympic Games.

I make this point time and again: I am chair of both organising committees. We see no distinction. My chief executive is chief executive of the Olympic Games and of the Paralympic Games. It is absolutely vital that we deliver this in a seamless, integrated way. They are different—they have a different spirit—but in terms of service levels and commitment to delivery, we are absolutely at one on this. We are the first Games to have appointed a director of Paralympic integration, Chris Holmes, who is blind and, with the exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, probably our most bemedalled Paralympian in the history of Paralympic sport in this country. So I assure the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that this is something that we take extraordinarily seriously, and thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, for keeping us always on our toes on this issue.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, I would like to support the words of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I apologise to him, as I took his amendment to mean non-competing athletes as opposed to athletes who will have access to their own venues at Games time. I thank him because it is really important to remember disabled people when we talk about events such as this. At previous Games I do not think that there has been an awful lot of understanding about the needs of disabled spectators. For example, when I went to the Barcelona Olympics to watch my fellow Welsh compatriot Colin Jackson compete in the 110 metres final, I had a superb seat, right on the finish line—the ticket was free and I thought that all my dreams had come together. But what they did not take into account was that as soon as the gun went off everybody stood up and I saw absolutely nothing, not even the replay on the screens. It was about three weeks later, when I got home from the Paralympics, that I got to watch it on VHS.

I was involved in the bid and I have declared my work on a number of sub-committees of LOCOG. I really thought at the start that my job would be to sit there and constantly say, “What about the Paralympics?”. I am very pleased that I have never had to do that. One committee that I sit on is the diversity and inclusion committee. It is perhaps unfortunate that some of the work that it does is unseen by the wider public in terms of the number of disabled people now employed at LOCOG and who are Games makers and will be volunteers at Games time. It is important that we see disabled people in the park act as volunteers, and that everyone else can come in and see.

The noble Lord, Lord Coe, has covered most of what I wanted to say, but I wanted to say that the Changing Places toilets are incredibly important to a number of disabled people who have higher or complex needs. They have beds and hoists. There is a superb example in Lower Waiting, if any the noble Lord would like to go and have a look at it. I will not talk any more about toilets at this point, but it is something that is changing the face of how disabled people are treated in venues—and I hope that that will carry on to other sporting events, Olympics and Paralympic Games.

Finally, again as a spectator, the fact that at the Games the seating is scattered around venues in different price points is fantastic, because there is nothing worse for wheelchair users all to be stuck in one box in a really bad space where you cannot see anything—but that is where “you lot” go. I am really pleased to say that that definitely has not happened with London 2012.