Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

It was one of the most pleasurable and immensely interesting experiences of my three years in the Lords to take part in this Select Committee, ably and expertly led by our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and very well served by our excellent committee staff and our advisers. Above all, we all got on incredibly well. I wondered why that was and I think that, fundamentally, it was because we were discussing and examining something that was successful and we all had great determination that we were not going to lose the legacy of that success.

I think that there are four principal elements of this legacy. There is the ongoing sporting success which we want to lead to increased participation in our sport and to better lifestyles and health—we are, after all, a nation of great lovers of sport and it is always more enjoyable when we are good at it. The second legacy that we were interested in is the boost to business, which was so successfully involved in the running of the Olympics—the construction, the involvement of our creative sector, the event organisers, the logistics experts and sporting businesses. Thirdly, there was the huge success of delivery by government agencies, assisted by private sector expertise. We must learn the lessons from that and the best practice that was employed through that success. Finally, the most important thing going forward is the whole regeneration of the East End of London, which was at the heart of our original Olympic bid.

We have discussed a number of issues tonight, but I want to draw on a number of examples of people whom we met and people whom we visited to draw out lessons for the legacy. I want to start with the issue of elite sport. The medal tally was outstanding. There was, however, a huge advantage to the home team. We must have lower expectations in Brazil, because I fear that there will be a spiralling down of performance, as happened with Australia, which simply continued after Sydney through Beijing to London. That is a warning to us.

There were two evidence sessions which left a mark on me. The one has already been mentioned, with Sir Clive Woodward. Sir Clive Woodward was exceptional as a witness and he clearly played a key role in our athletes’ success. We know what happened to English rugby when he left that scene. We know also that he told us that there was a huge organisational effort behind the scenes to achieve success in the Olympics, where the margins between success and failure at this level are so narrow. He said that it would be very difficult to replicate that away from home, and the team has largely disassembled since. He gave us a warning also about the lack of encouragement to key underperforming team sports and said what we should do about it. It is most difficult to win in those sports, which is one reason why they are not targeted, but we know that they have large public participation benefits. We have to understand, obviously, the rigour in competition for encouraging success at elite sports. It puts pressure on improved performance.

However, we have also to admit that UK Sport has ignored our advice—it has done that this week. If it does not want to consider compromising on the basis of elite funding, somebody—I suppose that that is going to be Sport England or other organisations—has to provide parallel, complementary funding for community sports to encourage sports where there is high participation potential, even if elite success finds it very difficult to qualify for elite sport funding.

The second meeting which impressed me was that with Ian Drake, the chief executive of British Cycling—modest, professional, supremely successful in what he has achieved—setting out his original objectives. Twelve years ago, he told us, they had to advertise for athletes to be Olympic cyclists. The strategy that they adopted matched their elite performance success in Beijing and London, with target rates of public participation improvement. Now they choose from 50,000 competitive cyclists for their success at the senior level.

The approaches outlined by Clive Woodward and Ian Drake contrasted, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, with the complacent approach of more wealthy major sports such as football and tennis. I hope that Greg Dyke will shake up football in England at national and community level and answer the questions: does Germany’s success depend much more on its community football structure, with twice as many volunteer qualified coaches than we have; and are training facilities and processes for players and coaches simply not rigorous enough?

As my noble friends Lord Holmes and Lord Moynihan said, elite sport success has been built on John Major’s initiative with the Lottery. Over £300 million goes into the current Olympic cycle for elite sport funding. However, others in the world will copy what we do and have achieved. They will poach our know-how and skills so that it will become much more difficult for us. We cannot stand still or be complacent. We must seek out enhanced, competitive advantage and, ultimately, focus on increased participation and better training pathways than other countries can produce.

As for regeneration, two visits struck me and stay in my mind as showing the challenge for regeneration. We have already heard of the meeting we had with the community residents in Newham. It was depressing. They saw little benefit from the Olympics. Their perceptions were of traffic congestion, construction work, Games disturbance and no jobs while their council houses remained unpainted. Then there was the uplifting meeting we had at Gainsborough School in Hackney Wick. Some 40% of children there were from immigrant population origins and 10% came to the school not speaking English. Yet it was vibrant—a well led school in a Victorian building, with only a tarmac courtyard for play facilities. We met keen, aspirational children who had been in the opening ceremony at the Olympics. They were enthusiastic about the Olympics and their own aspirations were encouraging. The school facilities were about to be transformed by two pitches on the Olympic park by the press and broadcast centre, with their own bridge across the canal from the school to those playing pitches built by the legacy corporation.

The challenge for us in regeneration, though, is whether we can retain the optimism and aspirations of these children as they move through our educational system. Regeneration will work well only if all parts of the community benefit and housing is provided that is affordable. I picked up one word of warning as we went round the park: the first £1 million flat was for sale. Is that a warning of what will come? As we regenerate and build, the skills of the local people—as the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out—must be harmonised and harnessed in that process. That started a bit, as we heard, in the Westfield shopping centre, but this is an area of low aspiration that must be transformed with better educational and technical training facilities. In the response from the Government and mayor, it is encouraging that they are moving ahead with the opening of two university technical colleges, one dealing with modern methods of construction of business units and the other with design and engineering. That is a start.

As for the stadium, we had two fascinating meetings with the CEO of West Ham and the chair of Leyton Orient. We thought the dispute between West Ham and Leyton Orient was unseemly. Having seen them, we were cautious in proposing that they should work closely together—that was probably wise. But the national stadium is iconic. It is bigger than those two clubs. There was a huge cost in changing the plans for that stadium. What matters now is that those two clubs do for their communities what really needs to be done and make a success of those facilities and their presence there. They have a key role in raising expectations and achievement in those communities. That role could be immense. It is also very important that the stadium sets a standard—as I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will tell us in her remarks—for the quality and quantity of seating for the disabled. I was encouraged by the Government’s response to the report on that issue.

So much success in sport, business and indeed politics depends on strong confidence. The key to the Olympic legacy is not to lose the feeling of confidence that we really can achieve something in our sport, business ventures, regenerating east London and inspiring those young children we met in east London to aspire and take advantage of the Olympic legacy so that it becomes self-fulfilling.