Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I, too, place on record my appreciation for the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, chaired the committee and the excellent support we were given by the committee clerk and his team, and the two special advisers.

As has been noted, the committee put in a very considerable volume of work at short notice to get our report completed by our deadline. Against that background, the Government’s response is disappointing. On many issues raised by the committee in its unanimous report there was little response more than restating government policy without regard to the report’s rationale. There is little point in incurring a commitment of time and money in undertaking such an investigation if the Government treat it less than rigorously. But, to be even-handed, I note my disappointment that there appears to be no direct comment from the Governments of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, either, although many of the recommendations have a direct bearing on the responsibilities of those devolved Administrations. Of course, they have no obligation to respond. However, the Welsh Government recently took their own initiative. I will return to that in a moment.

I make one general point before addressing six or seven of the 41 government responses. The Olympic Games are awarded to a specific city and not to a country. The ethos of the Games requires that the competitors, and hence the competitions themselves, function within a reasonable proximity of the location at which the Games are held. These aspects are not always fully understood. As the general UK taxpayer had to fund the considerable cost of the Games, there was a feeling sometimes that they should benefit more from a greater spread of the activities. For example, there was no need to build artificial mountain cycling locations in Essex. There are perfectly good natural ones in Wales. Sports such as sailing which, inevitably, had to move away from London could have been held in locations such as Pwllheli, where many European competitions are held.

I accepted that London and south-east England would benefit far more from hosting the Games for those reasons, but perhaps the Government should have been more honest from the start by making that clear to everyone. I also repeat what I have gladly put on record many times: that the Olympic Games and, in particular, the Paralympic Games, were a tremendous success and that everyone involved—competitors, organisers, security services and volunteers and, indeed, both Governments—deserve congratulations.

Perhaps I may make a few brief comments on half a dozen issues arising directly from the Government’s response. First, there are the recommendations relating to sport in schools, to which several noble Lords have already alluded, particularly primary schools. I am looking at recommendations 4, 5 and 6. There does not seem to be any new government thinking on those matters; rather, there is the approach that “We are already doing what we deem appropriate”.

I urge the Government to follow carefully the initiatives taken in Wales arising from the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and her review committee. In fact, just yesterday, the Welsh Education Minister Huw Lewis announced a new £1.8 million physical literacy programme for schools. That is part of the response to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on schools and physical activity. It is to do four things: increase physical activity in schools; develop a physical literacy framework; involve prominent athletes in community sport; and build on Wales’s annual school sport survey.

The Welsh Government, in taking that strategic initiative, have asserted that physical literacy should be as important as reading and writing, which goes towards the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that PE should be a core subject, something which will now be considered by Professor Graham Donaldson in his curriculum review, due shortly. No doubt the noble Baroness will expand on some of those points in her contribution.

However, I welcome the Government’s response 13, dealing with the access to and facilities for disabled people at sports grounds, particularly football grounds. I am glad that the Government are prepared to consider further legislation on licence conditions, and I hope that we will be hearing more about that. Can the Minister —our poacher turned gamekeeper, if I may put it that way—indicate the timescale envisaged to progress that legislative aspect?

I am somewhat disappointed by government response 15. It relates to the identification of the net benefit figures and the committee’s call for them to be published. The response has been woeful. The Government appear to be totally complacent about measuring the economic effects in terms of gross benefit and stubbornly refused to identify the net benefit. I can only conclude that they may have something to hide and that the net economic benefit is a much smaller proportion than the gross figures.

As we are repeatedly told that so many aspects of the project spending would have taken place in due course irrespective of the Games, I can only conclude that such infrastructure spending is being treated coyly to avoid the possibility of generating Barnett consequentials for the devolved Administrations.

On response 32, the committee called for SMEs to be helped in the public sector procurement process by having the “compete for” system permanently available. The Government’s response did not address our worries about the danger to SMEs of the proliferation of procurement tools. Can we be assured that the Government have taken that fully on board and are sensitive to the needs of SMEs, and that opportunities for SMEs will be equally available throughout the UK?

The committee noted in item 33 that south-east England benefited disproportionately from the Games and called on UKTI to assess the reasons for the disparity. The Government defend their record by quoting the number of projects going to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—14%, by number—but they do not give the figures with a breakdown by value and do not address the failure to give northern England a fair deal. That response is rather complacent.

I can, however, welcome the response to point 34 about the need to ensure that tourists coming to the UK get beyond south-east England. I notice that the DCMS has asked VisitBritain to address that issue and I hope that the House will be kept informed of progress.

I turn to response 37, dealing with the committee’s questioning of the existence of any long-term distinct legacy benefit of the Cultural Olympiad. The Government passed the buck in its entirety to the Arts Council of England, and every item that it mentions which has a geographic base is in fact in England. That is perhaps understandable for the Arts Council of England, but the Government are a UK Government, and taxpayers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland contributed to funding the Olympic Games. Surely the Government should have been aware of the need to address legacy issues in terms of the arts and culture in the three other nations, not just in England. Perhaps they have done so and have just forgotten to mention it in their response. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that.

Finally, I address item 39, which concerns the omission, tacitly acknowledged in the Government’s response, on ensuring that the legacy is delivered outside London and that a designated Minister should work with the devolved Administrations. The Government’s response is that it is a matter for the devolved Administrations to make the most of the Games’ legacy in devolved functions, so there will be no additional resources or co-ordination on those matters. I believe that that is letting down a particular aspect of the legacy. I pick out those points and ask for the Minister’s response on them, but there are many other points in the body of the report which I hope will not be forgotten.