London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the British Olympic Association, a member of the Olympic board and a director of the London Organising Committee. From the outset, the specific measures we are being asked to consider are sensible and will, I hope, command the support of all sides of the House. The main issues on which we will no doubt focus in Committee are: increasing the maximum fine on the illegal sale of 2012 tickets from £5,000 to £20,000; allowing wider and easier enforcement of traffic regulations which are required as part of Games delivery; and clarity on seizing and disposing of infringing articles and vehicles during the Games period.

All-party support since your Lordships held their first debate following the BOA’s recommendation in 2004 to bid for the Games to come to London, before support from Cabinet was secured in 2005, was as strong then as it is today, and has been regularly marked by noteworthy contributions from my noble friend Lord Higgins, who is in his place today, and of course from my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. One advantage of this debate is that it provides, as it did in another place, the opportunity to review progress on the many measures which were recommended and agreed in the original 2006 Act and to take stock of progress to date.

The original Act made provision for the Olympic Delivery Authority, whose work is nearing conclusion. The true stars of the Games to date are the directors, management, staff, contractors and subcontractors of the ODA. They have delivered on time, to spec and on budget an array of facilities which will allow the equivalent of 26 world championships to be held simultaneously for the Olympians and Paralympians alike. John Armitt and David Higgins have proved to be outstanding leaders of that assignment and they deserve recognition both within Parliament and beyond for their remarkable gold medal achievements.

To me, a great Games requires the delivery of four objectives, the four legs which provide support to the overall success of an Olympic Games. First, there is the work of the ODA, the Government, the Mayor’s office and the private sector in taking forward the vision originally delivered by the National Olympic Committee, without whose support and approval no bid can be made anywhere in the world. That vision in London originally offered two possibilities: developing the facilities already standing in the West End of London, including Wembley as the hub, or the urban regeneration of the heart of the East End of London with some £9.3 billion-worth of new infrastructure, including roads, schools, housing and facilities. The lion’s share has not been spent on sport, but has breathed new life and oxygen into what was one of the most depressed areas not only of the United Kingdom but of Europe. To deliver the ODA work programmes on time is essential, and is near completion. What would have taken at least another 10 years of incremental spend—and a lot more politics—to complete will be celebrated as the finished article at the opening ceremony next year. It will be one of the great urban regeneration projects in the world. As I said, we are indebted to John Armitt, David Higgins and their teams for their achievement.

Secondly, I come to the work of LOCOG. This started in earnest in the public eye with the test events. LOCOG is the event manager. Its management team takes the completed theatre from the ODA and puts on the show. Its success to date has provided the Games with another success story. The test events gave the world a taste of some iconic settings for what will surely be great sporting memories next year. LOCOG will need to continue to put the interests of athletes first at all times. It will also need to face the challenges of security and transport. The good news in the context of the transport challenges—from accreditation of incoming athletes to management of the Underground in stations such as London Bridge at peak points during the Games and the expected crowds in and around Hyde Park during the time of Olympic events to be held in and around that area—is that we have an outstanding Secretary of State for Transport, the right honourable Philip Hammond MP. We at the British Olympic Association, along with all sides of the House, have every confidence that with him in control of the transport brief we will have the greatest chance of success.

The third leg supporting a successful Olympic Games remains the National Olympic Committee and its selection, management and leadership of a successful British team. The BOA needed to make consistent funding for the athletes its priority. We launched a campaign that ran up to and beyond the success of the team in Beijing. I remember arriving back with the team from Beijing to headline news on the front page of the Times referring to our call to ensure that the athletes, coaches, governing bodies and support staff for Team GB were not just well funded, but consistently well funded, principally through the Lottery. That campaign has succeeded. Tessa Jowell and Gordon Brown are to be congratulated on their response, as is Hugh Robertson, the current Minister for Sport and the Olympics, who delivered ongoing funding for the athletes following the successful outcome of the very difficult 2010 public spending round. Moving forward, it is essential that funding remains in place not only through to Rio 2016 for the Olympians and Paralympians, but beyond. It is also essential that funding is put in place for the winter athletes, for non-Olympic sports and the Special Olympians. We must ensure that they are not financially sacrificed on the altar of the singular success of Team GB in the Olympic and Paralympic Games next summer.

The BOA anticipates that for the London Olympics it will be selecting a team of some 550 British athletes. They will be supported by the strongest group of British Olympic Association managers and staff ever assembled in our history. Our total BOA complement of over 80 individuals continues to punch above their weight and deliver outstanding professionalism. In their work they are backed by one of the strongest advisory boards in the country. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Patten for his contribution in that context. I can inform the House that retaining our position of fourth place in the medal table gained in Beijing will be a very tough challenge, but with ever-improving coaching, support staff and backing from the BOA’s performance team and the governing bodies, Formula 1 sports like rowing, cycling and many more will, I am sure, continue to deliver outstanding medal performances. I believe we will lead out a British Olympic Team at the opening ceremony that will win more medals in more sports and will lead to the 2012 British Olympic Team returning back to the closing ceremony as one of the greatest British teams ever.

For the fourth and final leg, as my noble friend Lord Addington stated, we need to ensure that we deliver a sports legacy for Great Britain and Northern Ireland to match the three other key areas of activity. Where sports legacy is concerned, as the House has heard me say consistently, we still have a long way to go. However, our goal remains clear: the Games must be transformational for all sport and recreational activity, able-bodied and disabled, the length and breadth of this country. They must be not just inspirational but transformational. There must not only be enthusiasm for the Games; they must be visible for local communities from Tottenham to Totnes, putting to good use bricks and mortar to increase the number of sports facilities. There must be improved local authority facilities, not cuts in their recreation budgets. There must be more investment from the private sector which the BOA, totally independent from government and public funding, can drive in 2013 and beyond, not lost playing fields and declining participation. There must be a new, invigorated focus on governing bodies, schools and clubs as the catalysts for more involvement in sport and sustained high-level performance, not a reliance on quasi-governmental organisations.

We all have a responsibility here—the Government above all, but also LOCOG, the International Olympic Committee, the British Olympic Association, the British Paralympic Association and politicians from all sides of this House. Let us sit at the table and work together to raise the bar for British sport, able-bodied and disabled, Olympic and non-Olympic. If the Games are not transformational in the sense that I have outlined, we will have a legacy of lost sporting opportunities around the nations and regions which we will regret, from losing out on the delivery of a new school sports policy to the need to embed sport, recreation and fitness programmes into the heart of health policy. Then, of course, it is vital to ensure that local authority spend on sport and recreation becomes mandatory, not discretionary. That single change alone would be transformational for sport and it would be the building block on which the excellent work undertaken by Hugh Robertson in his Places People Play initiative could flourish.

In concluding, I want to comment on one issue which was raised in another place during consideration of the Bill—the specific issue of press allocations, to which I am sure we will find a way to return in Committee. The British Olympic Association received more than 3,000 applications for 410 accreditations for written and photographic press based in the UK—a ratio of almost eight requests for every one accreditation available to award. As the national Olympic committee, we are assigned by the International Olympic Committee the responsibility of allocating Olympic Games media accreditation for media organisations based in the UK in the same way that all 204 national Olympic committees are given that responsibility within their territory by the International Olympic Committee. This does not include the allocation of 90 accreditations which have been awarded by the International Olympic Committee to the Press Association, for the Press Association has been designated by the International Olympic Committee as the national news agency for the UK. It is the expectation of the IOC and the BOA that the Press Association will provide copy to local and regional papers—hence its national news agency status. The PA has committed to cover every single Team GB athlete. Its ambition is to have at least one reporter at every venue for every minute of the competition.

On top of that, we at the British Olympic Association have, with the help of the Newspaper Society, organised a regional pool which will complement and add to copy generated by the PA. This will be available to all bona fide regional and local papers which applied for accreditation within the timeline. I am very keen that we should offer additional services to those non Olympic-accredited media, including press conferences in Team GB House at Westfield, with flash quotes, phone interviews and access to the medallists from the home teams of the athletes, who will be inspired by their success. To give an example, 90 per cent of the sailing-specific venue accreditations in Weymouth and Portland were awarded to local, regional and sports-specific written press, with 100 per cent of the photographers’ passes going to the same group.

To assist with the allocation process, the BOA established a Media Accreditation Committee to act as an impartial and fully transparent body to review and provide input on the BOA’s recommendations. The MAC is composed of representatives from a broad spectrum of the written and photographic press. They are widely respected for their knowledge and experience of numerous Olympic Games and their understanding of the UK media landscape. Recognising the unprecedented interest and demand among the UK press—as well as letters that I have received from noble Lords on both sides of the House—we will continue to lobby the IOC for more accreditations. We have requested a further meeting with it later this week specifically to discuss local press access.

I look forward to the Committee stage of the Bill and I thank the many noble Lords who have worked closely with the British Olympic Association over the years for their support and advice. We are on course for a memorable and successful Games.