London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Baroness Ford Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ford]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for, possibly inadvertently, giving me a cue to talk about the legacy of the 2012 Games. I declare my interest as chair of the Olympic Park Legacy Company. I also need to convey a message to your Lordships’ House from the noble Lord, Lord Coe, who is quite unusually not in his place today during an Olympics debate. He is hosting the IAAF’s visit to London. We are in the final stages of the London bid for the 2017 World Games. This morning he and I hosted the technical committee out in the Olympic park. What a joy it was to take such distinguished visitors to the Olympic park. London looks at its best today, and I can say that the Olympic park also looked at its best. When we went into the main stadium, where the track has just been laid, the field of play looked quite magnificent, and against the wonderful iridescent blue sky—I am becoming quite lyrical here—that is frequently a feature of east London, as my noble friend Lord Mawson will assure us, the whole thing could not have been teed up more perfectly. I hope it had the desired effect on my colleagues from the IAAF. The noble Lord, Lord Coe, was very keen that I stress his apology to your Lordships for his absence this afternoon.

Being out in the park this morning and looking back six or seven years, it still takes me aback to think of what has been accomplished. I knew the site very well in the old days. It is almost unbelievable to look at it now and see the wonderful landscaping and the fantastically cleaned-up waterways. As the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, will testify, many people did not realise that there were waterways in that part of London. To see those seven kilometres of water glittering this morning with the wildlife and ecosystems back in place was quite breathtaking. I echo the tribute paid by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to the vision and diligence of the Olympic Delivery Authority in transforming one of the most unpromising sites in Europe in terms of pollution and big physical challenges. Let us not forget that there were six major pylons marching through the site. In a feat of financial heroism, the then Deputy Prime Minister, now the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, simply said, “If we’re going to do the job, let’s do it properly and underground the power lines”. It is unimaginable to think of what the park would be like if the power lines were still there. Those kinds of really important decisions were taken very early in the project and quite literally laid the foundations for a stunning achievement.

It is not just the theatre, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, put it, where the show will take place which is important. Our job in the legacy company—and I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lord Mawson who serves on the board of the legacy company with me—is to accomplish three things. In the immediate aftermath of the Games, we have to do something that has never been done in any country which has staged an Olympic Games. We have to make sure that every single venue in the purpose-built park has operators, is financially stable, and commercially and socially successful. That has never been accomplished in the immediate aftermath of a Games. It took Sydney many years even to set up a legacy company. The Mayor of London and the Government showed great foresight in setting up the legacy company three years before the Games so that we could deal with all these issues before the park reopens in legacy. Let us not forget that the park will close down for a year after the Games because a lot of construction work will have to take place before the park can reopen in legacy. All the Olympic overlay has to come off and the correct size roads, footways, paths and bridges have to be re-engineered, so a huge construction job still has to be done. We want to make sure that when the park reopens in legacy for the benefit of the local communities, the wider London community, the rest of the UK and international visitors, every venue is working well, the park is programmed well, the first housing development is well under way and the Olympic village is thriving so that we can say that we lived up to what we promised in the bid: that these Games would be driven by regeneration as well as by many other important aspects.

I am very happy to report to your Lordships’ House today that we are on track to accomplish many of those things. Last month, the planning application, an exceptionally complex application for the master plan for these 500 sites, was submitted to the ODA planning team, and we expect to have planning approval for the outline master plan before the Games start. That has never been accomplished before. We will go to the market next week for the developer of the first neighbourhood of 800 family homes to be built immediately after the Games to complement the apartment-style homes already in the Olympic village. We have had huge interest and appetite from developers and house builders for that site. We expect to name our preferred developer well ahead of the Games. Again, that has never been accomplished before. Anyone who has visited the park recently will have seen what a magnificent building Chobham Academy is. It is sponsored by Lend Lease and will now be run by the Harris Foundation. All the preparations, such as interviews for the head teacher and key staff, are well under way a long time ahead of the Games. That has never been done before.

All the other venues—the magnificent aquatic centre, the broadcast centre, the velodrome, the handball arena which will be a mixed-use arena in the Games—are on track to have operators identified and confirmed in the early part of next year, well ahead of the Games. These things have never been accomplished before. When the park reopens in legacy, I am delighted that Her Majesty has agreed to lend her name to the park in her Diamond Jubilee year. Alongside the magnificent brand that is the Olympics, the park will be known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park when it reopens.

All of these things are very important and give us the momentum for the immediate post-Games legacy that was promised, but this is only part of the story. Ours is a long job. This is a 20-year project. Next year, if the Localism Bill becomes an Act, we will be transformed into an Olympic park development corporation or legacy corporation. The project will move from being a national and London project to one sponsored by the mayor under the scrutiny of the London Assembly. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, who follows me today, will continue to be a candid friend to us throughout all of that. She has been immensely constructive.

Then we will get to the point of a 20-year project. Eventually, this park will be home to over 10,000 people in the five neighbourhoods that surround the lovely parkland, wonderful venues and the waterways. That is not a job that can or ought to be done overnight. We should take our time and do it properly. We are absolutely determined that what happens in the park is intricately knitted-in to the communities that surround it. This cannot be some kind of island of glamour and prosperity without paying attention to all that knitting-in to those communities which surround the park—excellent and creative communities such as Fish Island, Hackney Wick and all the wonderful vibe that is the modern east London. You would never guess it from watching “EastEnders”, which bears absolutely no relation to the East End that I find in my working life. So we have a 20-year job here. This will be built out very carefully and sensitively. But my goodness, what assets we have been bequeathed by the work of the ODA: a fantastic financial investment in the infrastructure of the Olympic park. Over the next two years and then the subsequent 20 years, we aim to live up to the legacy of the Games and deliver something that has never been delivered before from a major sporting event.

Ken Livingstone would be the first to say that he is not noted for his love of sport but this takes me back to him saying, “Of course I am the biggest evangelist for the London Olympic Games. When else will I get central government to give me £9 billion for east London?”. Although he said that partly as a joke, he realised that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive the most enormous catalyst into the redevelopment of east London. We have a lot to live up to. The ODA has done a magnificent job and I have no doubt that LOCOG will stage a fantastic Games, or that the BOA will deliver us magnificent Olympic and Paralympic success. We then pick up the baton. Rest assured that we will not drop it.