Olympic Games: Security

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his words, particularly when he says that we should not at this stage be making negative comments about the Games. We want them to be a good set of Games—we want them to be secure, but not to be seen as “the security Games”. I am also grateful for his comments about what happened at earlier stages when we were not in government in terms of the original plans for the Games and how they were set up.

It is quite right that we are making use of contingency plans to bring in extra military service personnel to help out on some aspects of the Games, and that earlier on we brought in an extra 5,000 specialists from the Armed Forces to address security matters that only they could ever have dealt with, as we see from HMS “Ocean”, moored in the Thames, and other things that the private sector obviously cannot produce. We are talking here about providing some extra military personnel to deal with the problems created by the issues that G4S had. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that adequate training will be available, given that so many individuals will be coming to the job so late, and that the right training will be given to people designated to particular jobs? There was an unfortunate item on the news last night when a young man who was said to have been put forward by G4S—I think it was more than he was set up than put forward—indicated his difficulties with language.

As a more general and principled question, will the G4S contract be published? Before I am told that it is commercial and in confidence, I raise the point that both parties to a contract can agree to vary that sort of clause and perhaps G4S can be persuaded that it would be in the public interest, in both senses of the word, that the contract should be published.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I can give my noble friend an assurance that everyone doing a job involving security will have adequate training and we shall make sure that people who do not have adequate training will not be accredited.

Regarding whether the G4S contract will be published, that might be a matter for both parties to consider after the event, so let us leave it until then. It might be that G4S wishes to publish it, or that some sort of post-mortem, as my noble friend is suggesting, might be appropriate after these Games. I do not think it is proper that we should create fears that are not necessarily there at this stage.