Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

Baroness Jowell Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. As I said, although perhaps not as eloquently as he did, that is my view as well. This is a unique opportunity. The alternative—that we put on a poor show that was watched around the entire world—would be so damaging that it is right that we invest in it and make sure that we get it right. I am confident that, under the leadership of Danny Boyle, that is exactly what we will achieve. As I said, the budget for the staging of the games will be tight, but I hope that it can be achieved without cost to the taxpayer. Our initial hopes proved to be rather less accurate as regards the cost of building the facilities. The original candidature file put the cost of preparing for the games at £3.4 billion, of which £2.375 billion was to be spent by the Olympic Delivery Authority. In March 2007, the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood came to the House and said that the public sector funding package would actually be £9.325 billion.

[Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will also recall that when I came to the House in May 2005, before we went to Singapore, I made it clear that in the event of our winning the games, a complete review of the budget would have to be undertaken because of a number of uncertainties, such as the VAT status, the degree of contamination at the site and the extent of our regeneration ambitions. We made that review between 2005 and 2007. The budget as I published it in 2007 remains the budget.

[Mr Whittingdale]

Indeed it does. I was not seeking to criticise the right hon. Lady, but merely making an observation. She is right that one of the two main reasons given for the increase was that, rather surprisingly, VAT had been left out of the original calculation and there was some uncertainty over that.

[Tessa Jowell]

May I just deal with that point, which is tediously technical? When we compiled the budget, the status of the delivery organisation had not been settled. The definition of status could have placed the delivery authority on one side or the other of liability for VAT. If it had been, in effect, a local authority, it would not have been liable for VAT. It was judged not to be a proxy body for a local authority and was therefore liable for VAT. That was not clear until, having won the bid, we were able to nail down the role and function of the delivery authority.

[Mr Speaker]

We are now clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I welcome this debate and the enthusiasm of the many hon. Members who have spoken, as well as their determination to ensure, particularly when the torch makes its tour around the UK, that the towns, villages, cities and communities of Great Britain lead the celebration. We can be very confident on the basis of what we have heard today.

This week will mark 150 days to go until the opening ceremony when, as so often mentioned in the debate, half the world’s population will be watching the Olympic stadium in London. We must all feel a special tingle of anticipation at the prospect of what lies ahead.

I listened carefully to all the speeches and, although he is not in his seat, I would like pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). He captured, certainly better than I could, the spirit of “One Vision” and the equivalence between the summer Olympics and the Paralympics. Indeed, many of the Paralympian wags will say that the summer games are simply a test event for the main event that follows—the Paralympics.

This is a moment to take stock, under the watchful eye of the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), at whose mercy I have spent many hours in the past 10 years. It is a moment to focus again on why we decided to invest £9.3 billion of public money in seeking to host the greatest sporting event in the world. The term “legacy” is used very loosely, but it is important to pin down precisely the legacy commitment we made. It was twofold: first, that an Olympic games would drive the regeneration of east London and, secondly, that an Olympic games in London would transform a generation of young people through sport. As we consider the use and value to the public of that enormous investment of their money, let me set out briefly the achievements regarding each of those legacy promises.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and I join others in commending her for her role in securing the Olympic games for us. One of the legacies of the games is that they are going to be the ethical Olympics. Does she still share my concern about their sponsorship by Dow Chemical, especially given that the Indian Government have today launched a formal protest because of evidence that Dow and Union Carbide used private investigators to spy on activists who were supporting the Bhopal victims?

[Tessa Jowell]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. We have shared considerable concerns about the risks of that particular sponsorship and its investment in providing the wrap for the Olympic stadium. We have to be realistic about the degree and fundamental nature of change that the Olympic games alone can achieve, but they provide a moment to shine a bright light on continuing injustice in the world. We should never forget the suffering of the up to 25,000 people who died in the wake of the Union Carbide disaster. Neither should we forget that Saudi Arabia is the only country that will not be sending a team that includes women, flying in the face of the International Olympic Committee commitment—the Olympic commitment—to gender equality. Nor should we forget the stories about the exploitation of children, which I am glad to say were rapidly acted on by LOCOG. The Dow sponsorship will remain controversial, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend has raised that issue.

Let me return briefly to the two central commitments on legacy. First, on the regeneration of east London, many have rightly paid tribute to the outstanding work of the Olympic Delivery Authority, led by David Higgins, Dennis Hone and, of course, Sir John Armitt. They have done something that nobody believed possible when we started on this long course nearly 10 years ago. That work is a fantastic advertisement for a bold, confident UK plc and for the work force of the UK and I very much hope that the benefit of that investment—the expertise that been so carefully developed—can be traded around the world after our games.

This has been Europe’s largest public sector construction project and, possibly, the most ambitious exercise in regeneration. We have had many arguments over the Dispatch Box about the Olympic budget. When Labour was in government, we increased the scale of the ambition. Yes, we could have put what was called a flat-pack games on a contaminated site, but if we had not undertaken the regeneration of the site we could never have built homes there or built the polyclinic for which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) has campaigned so hard. Neither could we have had the venues with legacy use for our elite athletes of the future and for the young people of the communities in the six Olympic boroughs. Of the money spent on constructing the park, 75p in every pound has been spent on regeneration—on cleaning the soil, decontaminating the site, getting rid of the waterlogging and installing the wetland area that means that Canning Town will be protected from flooding. That is real regeneration in action. Some 90% of the material derived from demolition at that site was taken to be recycled.

As the hon. Member for Corby (Louise Mensch) rightly said, however, we have to measure the legacy in terms of more than just physical structures. For example, there has been a recreation of opportunity in the lives of the people who have worked on the park and in the lives of people in that part of east London, which houses two of the most deprived boroughs in the country. Of the 40,000 people who have worked in the Olympic park, 20% have come from the six boroughs and 13% were previously unemployed. There has been special focus on apprentices, with three times the regional average working not only in the park but on the construction of the village and at Westfield, where there are 10,000 permanent jobs and a retail skills academy.

There has also been a story around the country, which has been referred to by hon. Members, of contracts being let at a time of severe economic anxiety for small and medium-sized enterprises. The fact that such businesses have won 1,500 contracts means that we can tell a story of the Olympic park—of the steel for the aquatic centre coming from Neath, of the turf in the field of play coming from Huddersfield, of the steel for the Olympic stadium coming from Bolton and of the plants coming from Thetford. So, there has been investment in creating opportunities in the lives of a population who would not have had those opportunities were it not for the Olympic games.

Let me speak briefly about the second commitment—transforming a generation of young people through sport. That is a commitment not only for this country but for others around the world. The whole House can feel proud of the international inspiration programme now going on in 20 countries, which the organisers of the Rio games have agreed to take forward. In Bangladesh, 80,000 children have been taught to swim, and in north-west Brazil there have been leadership programmes. Magic Bus, which I know well—I have the bracelet—is a child development programme that uses sport to engage children in education.

All that has been achieved against a background of absolutely solid cross-party support, but there has been one decision that was incomprehensible: the dismantling of the organisation of sport for children in primary and secondary schools under which every child was doing two hours a week of sport. Those children were competing and had a choice of being involved in up to 14 sports. In the spirit of collaboration that has been such an important part of this process, I am prepared to wait and see how the Government’s plan unfolds, but I think the abandonment of school sport partnerships and of sport and physical activity for children in primary school and for younger children in secondary school is a terrible, missed opportunity. However, I do not hold the Minister or the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport responsible for that.

Many thanks are due: the plaudits for LOCOG will be endless, but we also celebrate the world-class excellence of, the ODA and the fact that it has achieved so much. We thank Sir Charles Allen, who has given life to the nations and regions programme, so that we will see all of the UK celebrating and creating its own experience of the Olympics. The Olympic Park Legacy Company has taken an extraordinary lead. The hon. Member for Corby was right to say how extraordinary it is that seven of the eight venues already have long-term tenants. We can be confident that the site will be a great social, commercial and sporting centre for London in the future.

[Tracey Crouch]

Will the right hon. Lady join me in thanking the private companies that have over a number of years invested in our athletes, but that will get nothing from the Olympic games, perhaps because they are not official sponsors? Aviva, where I worked before entering Parliament, has sponsored elite athletes; British Gas has sponsored swimmers, I believe, and other companies have sponsored gymnasts. They have helped our athletes to perform the best they can at the forthcoming Olympics.

[Tessa Jowell]

I am delighted to support everything the hon. Lady says. Through UK Sport, our athletes have been the beneficiaries of unprecedented funding to enable them to do their very best in front of the home crowd, but this is quintessentially a public-private partnership. I know the support that athletes have received from their sponsors has been indispensable, as has the sponsorship by some of our great companies of the games themselves.

[Mr Foster]

I was remiss in not mentioning this in my speech, but although the right hon. Lady is correct in saying that it is a public-private partnership and we should be grateful to all the private sector bodies that have sponsored and become involved, the one part of the public sector that is often missed and not thanked is local government. My local authority, Bath and North East Somerset council, has put in an enormous amount of effort and money to ensure that we get a lasting legacy.

[Tessa Jowell]

Again, I am delighted to join the right hon. Gentleman —my right hon. Friend for the purpose of Olympic business—in welcoming that work. I met a number of London local authorities last week to hear from them directly about their plans and the efforts they are undertaking. The commitment of so many local authorities is inspirational.

Many references have been made to the importance of cross-party support, which has been fundamental, first, to the stability of the delivery of one of the riskiest programmes imaginable; and, secondly, to maintaining public confidence. In particular, I thank the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) and the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport for the way in which they have maintained that cross-party solidity, from which lessons can be drawn, I believe, for other aspects of public policy that require long-term commitment.

There is a point at which we will hand the games over to the initiative, the passion and the enthusiasm of the British people, because there is only so much that Government, LOCOG and the ODA can do. There will be a moment in the middle of May when, as many hon. Members have said, the Olympic torch is lit and it begins its tour around our country. That will be the moment when the whole country wakes up to the certainty that the Olympic games—the UK’s games—will be held in London in a matter of 30 or 40 days.