Olympic Games 2012: Disruption to Businesses

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

Yet another interesting question from my noble friend.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, will the Minister expand a little on his response to my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham? We read in the press of the arrival of hundreds if not thousands of members of the Olympic family—which I think probably means the International Olympic Committee and all the hangers-on. No doubt each participating member state will send a senior Minister and their entourage, and that is before we get to our own Ministers. Will all these people be able to use these special lanes in addition to the athletes—who are the ones we want to get there on time—or will they be confined just to the athletes? If the lanes are extended to all these other people who think that they have a role to play then, as my noble friend said, the public will get very angry indeed.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the noble Lord will understand that the provision of the Olympic route network was a key component of our bid to host the Olympics. If we had simply said to the International Olympic Committee, “Oh yes, we will have a great transport system”, we simply would not have secured the bid. We had to tell the International Olympic Committee specifically how we would provide the transport, including the Olympic route network.