Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the most moving experiences of my life occurred as a result of being in your Lordships’ House. I was invited to participate in the medal ceremonies for the Paralympic Games. I presented six medals to people who had done extraordinary things in an extraordinary competition. The crowd was amazing in its support of the athletes, but what struck me most was that for those professional athletes or those operating at such a high level, I thought that all the emotion would be in the winning. In fact, the emotion was in receiving the medals—standing up and representing your country and being applauded by everyone, including your peers. The moments spent in the green room before the medal ceremonies were some of the most intense that I have ever experienced. It was an extraordinary and life-affirming occasion for me.

This has been a fantastic debate. I think that all the speakers have performed brilliantly. Speaking or being in this House is not an Olympic sport, nor I suspect will it ever be, but I think we should remember that we are up against a rather amazing football match in which a well known team looks as though it might actually win for a change, but noble Lords are in the Chamber and staying until the end of the debate. I am sure that the noble Baroness sitting opposite has the match on her very attractively styled iPad. Perhaps she will tell us when it is finally over because there are still a few minutes of stoppage time, but it is quite close. Anyway, enough of such boring things.

It must have been a fun Select Committee to serve on, and I must say that I felt a twinge of interest when I learnt about all the various things that happened. To have done all that work in such a compressed time speaks volumes about my noble friend Lord Harris and his ability to command and control. We experience it regularly on our side of the House because he chairs our Wednesday party meetings. You have to be very careful when he is in the chair. Clearly the committee was a model for the work of the House. The only thing I am concerned about is this. Why is it that such brilliant reports and the good debates that take place as a result of them are put down at relatively unpopular times, particularly when the House is relatively light? Perhaps the usual channels, which are represented here this evening, might take this comment away and think about it. This has been a really good debate which deserved a better audience and a greater chance to reach out and take its message to others. It would be nice if that were the case.

The point was made, which I think was a good one, that the committee’s timing might have been a problem, in the sense that, although it was post-euphoria, it probably did not have sufficient distance to look and see what main learning points we took from the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is something for the House authorities, but maybe the committee should agree voluntarily to reconvene perhaps in four-year Olympic cycles so that it can keep track of this over a much longer period. It is only in that way that the necessary learning and evaluation can take place, from the necessary distance. That may be too difficult to organise within our rather odd procedures, but I recommend the thought as a way of maintaining longevity for what has obviously been a very useful and appropriate use of the resources of the House.

What I have taken from the debate is an overall judgment that the Games were a spectacular success. They came, I think in the words of my noble friend Lord Harris, tantalisingly close to delivering what we would probably all agree was a legacy—not just limited to sporting issues but more generally. However, the term is problematic and we should perhaps not spend too much time worrying about what does and what does not qualify as a legacy. The Games seem to have not been successful as a beacon lighting the way for us who follow behind in terms of what we could learn from that and what we could do as a result of having experienced them. Instead, they rather cast a shadow in which the worry is that many of us, and most people in the country, have slipped back into our older bad ways and have not made a step change in our habits, activities or focus, which was what was hoped for.

It is the British disease to knock our successes, so we should not go over the top in terms of being critical about what happened. We clearly punched our weight in every conceivable way in terms of delivering a fantastic Games. For the first time, as noble Lords have said around the House, we embraced Paralympic sport and allowed it to come up to its rightful level as an equal partner in the arrangements. We increased women’s participation and helped to valorise that activity across the whole country. It re-inspired us in terms of what we call volunteering. All sports that I have ever witnessed or been involved in rely on volunteers, but to see them operating in London on the scale that they did was a dimension that we had not anticipated and was fantastic. We have regenerated east London and proved, in the words I think of the noble Lord, Lord Best, that the public realm can actually deliver fantastic changes to our houses and public spaces, and that we do not have to wait in the hope that some private sector company will, relying on the profit motive, somehow deliver something that would be of value to us. There are different ways of doing this and we should learn from that.

Why did we achieve this and what lessons should we learn from it? A common theme in all the speeches, although not always explicit, was that one of the key factors was that this was an apolitical process. All the parties concerned made this work, despite changes in the mayoralty and in government at the time. It was maybe sometimes difficult to restrain the natural wish to attack that which you see, but it was very important that in all the early stages, over the transitions and towards the end, everybody pulled together. It really made a difference.

It also helped that the budgeting was done in a sensible and mature way. We gave what seemed necessary to deliver the best Games possible—we did not whinge too much, there was a whacking great contingency and therefore, not surprisingly, they came in under budget. You just have to accept that the big-ticket costs are going to be there for this sort of event, and it was a huge occasion. It was well planned, and we have not said enough about the quality of the team that was recruited to deliver the Games and all the activities that went into them. The members of that team were superb and we owe them a great debt.

The scale and ambition of the Olympics and Paralympics has led to them being described in one of the reports that I have read, by the DCMS I think, as “mega” events. They did of course have a number of side products, because they encouraged co-ordination within government and across a range of bodies and organisations. The DCMS rather coyly says that these organisations perhaps would not normally have worked together but had to do so in order to deliver the Olympic Games. Maybe something of that idea of working with people you do not normally even spend time with might stick.

A similar but slightly different issue is how we had to improve our communications. Running so many events in so many different places over such a short period requires excellent communication, and the stakeholders, businesses, organisers and the Government had to improve what they normally did. They did, and that should not be undervalued.

We might never in our lifetimes repeat the Games on the scale that we saw in London but it was clearly a learning experience for everyone who was involved, even tangentially, in this work. As the DCMS report says, it clearly helped many organisations,

“to develop new skills, approaches and strategies”,

and, again rather coyly, to become,

“less frightened of complicated projects”.

So that is the answer: we just have to make things more complicated and they will be delivered. That is all right. We have learnt that and we should tick that box when it comes to be ticked.

That is all very macro and not very detailed, so what should we be doing about some of this stuff? Clearly the report and the committee’s discussions lead us towards suggestions about what we should do. First, as we have heard, it is important that we recognise that there are some negatives and things that did not go right. There are still some things that are not working as well as we would like. We should not have our eyes taken over the horizon and ignore things such as the travel stories related by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, which are just ridiculous. Perhaps this is a tribute to the Games and the fact that we have been so exposed to it, but these problems now seem to be from some time in the past and I am really quite shocked that they still exist in modern transport arrangements. But if they are there, there must be some changes and I hope that the Government will pick up all those examples and ensure that we get an improvement in the way the world operates.

A number of noble Lords said that they were disappointed by the Government’s response, and I can see where that comes from. The report received the distinction of getting a very long response from the Government, which deals with all the points, but the tone is not right. It seems very limiting about where it might go and does not leave any real aspiration in terms of the discussions, and I think that is a pity. I hope that the Minister might put a gloss on some of that.

The speeches tonight were really good. I took a great deal from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, some of which I think he has given before. I mean no disrespect to him at all but I think this is the first time I have seen him try to give an all-encompassing view of what we need to do to better arrange our disposition of resources for elite athletes and to encourage the participation of those who will never reach the elite level but who need and want to be part of a more active and more participative society. We must read what he said carefully. Again, I hope that the Minister will respond to it and think carefully about the tone of what was said, because in the report there was a sense of bringing together a number of themes and thoughts that would bear further discussion and debate.

The figures given by my noble friend Lady King about the obesity situation in her area were shocking. I recall that when we won the right to host the Games in Singapore, the then Government made a promise to the IOC and, indeed, to the people of this country that we would inspire a generation of young people through sport. This was not just because of sport but because of the important underlying link to obesity and fitness.

It has been said that inactivity is probably the biggest public health problem of the 21st century and I think there is a lot in that. Physical inactivity, along with poor diet, has led to the epidemic of obesity that we have heard about, with 26% of adults and 30% of children in this country now classified as obese—the fourth highest level in the world. That is simply shocking. Other associations with exercise that we need to think about include the way that it reduces stress, anxiety and depression. We have also heard how high-quality PE and sports programmes, managed by committed and trained teachers and coaches, can boost attendance among certain groups of children at school, challenge anti-social behaviour and, most importantly, boost academic performance. So there is some value in that. Will the Minister explain what is happening in school sport?

We knew when we got the Games that simply having a successful Olympic and Paralympic Games would not necessarily bring about a sustained increase in sports participation, and there is research evidence to support that. That is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, reminded us, the previous Government invested year on year in school and community sport in the years running up to the Olympics. The number of young people doing at least two or more hours of sport per week had risen to 90%, with 55% doing three or more hours a week, which is a very important aspect of what we have been saying. However, since 2010, we have seen some of this sporting infrastructure begin to disappear. There has been a reduction of about 70% in funding to school sport. Can the Minister remind us what is in the plan and how that will change over the next few years?

What is happening to adult participation? There was a target of 2 million more people being physically active as a result of the Games—which was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Billingham—and, overall, 1 million more people being active through sport. Money was given to Sport England to get “whole sports plans” for national sporting bodies to drive up participation. I agree with the report’s view that these plans need to be made transparent and that we should discuss and debate them because they are important, but the money has been cut and the number of those who are active in sport has gone down, which is not a good thing.

What is the government response to that? Is there any hope that they might look again at how the sports bodies deliver those funds and make sure not only that those adults who are interested participate in sport at the appropriate level but that far more people generally get active in sport?

I have suggested that one of the key elements of that must be to try to work together across the parties. It is important that we get across some of the ideas that might put some flesh on that. It was an important part of the success of the Games that we were able to work together across the political parties. It does not often happen in British politics, although the Leveson episode is another that we could pray in aid in this. Is it not about time that we thought about that in relation to the legacy? We have had a success. Team GB has been fantastic. The television coverage brought that out to the widest possible audience that we could get, and they loved it. So could the real legacy be that we should make the future of sport above party politics? Why do the Government not expand the current, rather secretive Cabinet committee and make it cross-party, and invite all the organisations responsible for making sport happen in our country to come together and see whether we can get some real, concrete action?

Let us reverse the downward trend in public funding for sport and physical activity. Working cross-government and cross-party on that, that might be achievable. Any investment that raises participation in sport has to be a good thing and there would be savings. One could perhaps have as a national indicator that the amount of money that goes into sport should be a reflection of the savings that would come later in the life cycle in terms of what the NHS would have to bear if there was disease related to lack of activity.

What about the structures that we have talked about tonight? We should try to come up with something that genuinely serves the elite but also improves participation. It would need a lot of work and effort, and there are lots of ways in which it would be difficult to do because of the way in which sports are organised in the country and strength of the clubs. However, working together and working across party, maybe that is possible.

The most important issue that has come out of the report, and one that I would like to see most attention paid to, is the question of primary schools, which, as many noble Lords have said, is probably where we have to start. Habits for sport and exercise, we know, are set early in life, and all the available evidence indicates that expert coaching at an early age is the best route to installing lifelong sporting habits. But it has to be expert; it has to be properly delivered; and it has to be done in a way that is consistent and does not depend on the individual in the smaller primary schools who might not have the right training or approach. School sports partnerships had a big impact on improving the sporting offer. It is interesting that the model that was adopted by the previous Government has now been picked up by Australia, Brazil and Canada. With imitation being perhaps the sincerest form of flattery, we might want to look at that again.

Those are some ideas that I hope the Minister might respond to. However, the excellent report that we have before us and the wonderful speeches that we have heard tonight merit a better response than we have had so far.