2012 Olympics (Legacy)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Miss Anne McIntosh (in the Chair)]

Order. I am going to try to give everyone who wants to speak an opportunity to do so. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) informed me in advance that he would like to speak, so I shall try to fit in the last two speakers in the 10 minutes after he has spoken.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing the debate and on introducing the important topic of the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. It is important to stress that both are included; often the Paralympics are overlooked.

The issue of the legacy is crucial because, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) said, the Olympics are not about a few exciting weeks of sporting and cultural extravaganza in London and a few other places. They are about the legacy that can come from the work that is being done and has been done; as the hon. Gentleman said, the real judgment about whether we have succeeded will be made in 10 years’ time. I was lucky enough to be in Singapore, and I saw the brilliant work that Seb Coe and his team did in inspiring the world to get behind us, support our bid and ensure our success, when Jacques Rogge pulled London’s name from the envelope—it took him an interminable time to do it. The fact that I and the Minister—who at that time was the Opposition spokesman—were there showed how from the very beginning support for the Olympics and Paralympics has been cross-party. It is important to recognise that although I may have disagreed with the previous Government in some matters, broadly speaking everyone has worked together.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), who in her role as Secretary of State and Olympics Minister did a huge amount of work to drive forward the preparation for the games and to build up the plans for a lasting legacy. The one area that rarely gets touched on, although it featured heavily in the bid—in the inspiring videos referred to by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—is the issue of inspiring the world. Everyone will remember how we made a commitment to use the games to inspire the world to get involved in sporting activity and all the benefits that come from it. The right hon. Lady deserves huge credit for her work in establishing the International Inspiration scheme, which has been so successful, and which helps our work in the aid programme in many places around the world. I have been particularly impressed by something with the awful acronym ICES—the International community Coach Education Standards—which has brought people from all around the world together to share expertise in developing coaching skills. That is part of the legacy that is often forgotten.

The right hon. Member for East Ham put forward a powerful case for the West Ham solution for the future of the stadium. His arguments about the business case and the huge business benefits for his community and the surrounding area were very powerful. However, the most powerful argument of all is the simple one concerning the commitment made at the time of the bid, that there would continue to be an athletics track there, and opportunities for an athletics centre of excellence. The decision is with another body, not the Government, but I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be successful and that that is the solution that will be reached. It is interesting to hear two Members supporting major football clubs who have both reached the same conclusion, despite representing very different parts of London. The right hon. Gentleman’s case is powerful, but of course we shall have to wait and see. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say.

While we are inspiring people around the world, it is interesting to note that we are still inspiring people in this country. Tens of thousands of people have already given their names as potential volunteers to help during the Olympics and Paralympics. That is very encouraging. Two million people have already registered on the tickets website, which shows that there will be very significant take-up by people from within the UK, who want to come and enjoy the games. However, the legacy is about many things. Of course it is to do with the issue that the right hon. Member for East Ham raised about buildings and what is happening in the east end of London, but we must not forget that there has been regeneration elsewhere as well; for example, in Weymouth, the centre for sailing. That is very important. Also there will be a legacy from the significant improvements being made to transport systems in London. The right hon. Member for Tottenham may have wanted even more, but let us not forget that those improvements will produce a significant legacy.

There will be a real legacy in business and employment, as has already been mentioned. Huge numbers of contracts have gone out through the Olympic Delivery Authority for building the Olympic site and the Olympic village, which in turn will provide the legacy of more affordable housing—urgently needed in that part of London. There are opportunities still to come, even though the site is nearly complete. There will be opportunities in the contracts to be awarded through the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. In the next 12 months there will be £250 million of contracts, for everything from seating to whistles and DayGlo vests and there will be job opportunities from security to ticketing; the list goes on. There will be a large number of opportunities. What is pleasing is that well over 50% of the £450 million of LOCOG contracts that have already been awarded, or that are being finalised, have gone to small and medium-sized businesses, many of which are in London. That is of real benefit to those businesses. Very pleasingly, 95% of the contracts have gone to organisations, businesses and companies in the United Kingdom; it has been a real opportunity. I was interested to see that even the Royal Mint has got in on the act, with the contract to provide the 2,700 medals that will be needed for the games.

There are a couple of areas of concern. The first is to do with the legacy that we hope to get from tourism. We all understand that we are in financially difficult circumstances. I do not want to argue about who is responsible for that, but we all know the situation. It is understandable that budgets and funding, even to tourism organisations, have had to take their share of cuts. However, there is one thing I am particularly concerned about. The Government, rightly in my view, propose to end the regional development agencies and replace them with local enterprise partnerships. Those will in many cases—they will decide—have responsibility for tourism. Unfortunately, however, we will have a gap between the ending of the work that is being done by the RDAs and the work that will begin to be done by the local enterprise partnerships. In that gap of up to two years, tourism may lose out if action is not taken.

In my region, the South West of England RDA established South West Tourism, which did a lot of important work to promote tourism in our region. However, the contract for that work cannot be renewed and it comes to an end on 31 March 2011, even though the RDA does not end for another 12 months after that. Because the contract cannot be renewed, that work will finish. The South West RDA maintained one responsibility in-house, which was for marketing, including tourism marketing, but because all marketing by the RDA has already ceased, tourism marketing in the south-west has already ceased, too.

There is a real problem with the gap between the ending of the RDAs and the formation of the local enterprise partnerships. What will happen during that gap in respect of tourism, which seems to be crucial in the run-up to 2012?

The other area where I have some concern is the school sport partnerships, although I am delighted that there have been some recent announcements about them, which were referred to by the right hon. Member for East Ham. I am very supportive of the coalition Government, but I stood up in a debate on the Floor of the House to point out that I was deeply concerned that while money was to be transferred to schools through the ending of ring-fencing—something I very much welcome—there was still a problem, in that schools did not know what their budgets were. Therefore, they did not know whether they could use any of that money to support sporting activity, and we would have had a situation where the framework of support provided by the SSPs would have disappeared long before the schools could decide whether to put money into them.

As I said on the Floor of the House, it seemed absolutely critical that we maintained a framework that would enable schools, when they knew what their funding allocation was, to determine whether to put money into SSPs; if not, clearly we would have to look for other solutions anyway. I am pleased that a decision was made to find a way of maintaining that framework.

However, I put it to the Minister that we can still go further to make the network more secure; I genuinely believe that we can do that. The other organisations that are already operating very successfully indeed are the county sports partnerships. In some cases, the SSPs are already linked to the county sports partnerships and it seems to me that we could strengthen the framework for schools to bid into by examining ways of more effectively merging the activities of the county sports partnerships and the SSPs, to enable them to do their incredibly valuable work. More work needs to be done in that regard.

I want to be brief, so I shall end by saying just one more thing. Very often, when we talk about legacy, we do exactly what I have just done; we refer to “legacy” in different pots, whether it is building legacy, transport legacy, tourism legacy or sporting legacy, but very often, the truth is rather different—they are all interlinked. The work that we have been doing in the west of England, where I have the honour to be the co-chair of Team West of England, involves finding ways of integrating all the legacy issues. For example, we have got the British Paralympic Association to use the wonderful facilities at Bath university as their training ground. That has not just been good for Bath university; it has been good for local businesses, hotels and bed and breakfasts, and many other service industries in the area. That project is bringing all these things together.

In the same way, when the very first training camp deal was done by Bristol university to bring the Kenyan team in, the university had a 10-point plan, of which the Kenyan team coming to train in Bristol in the run-up to the 2012 games was the last item. The other items were much more about developing links between Bristol and places in Kenya, including schools links, business links, professional team links and so on. Those are the sorts of things that we can still do and that we need to do much more of. However, I am very optimistic that we shall have a great legacy from what will be a fantastic set of Olympic and Paralympic games in 2012.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (in the Chair)]

We have six minutes left for two speakers, before I call the Front-Bench spokesmen.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Miss McIntosh, and may I welcome you to the Chair?

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing the debate. Unusually, I make a declaration. It is not in the register, but I have to declare an interest as a Tottenham fan, although my focus in this debate is on what is in the best interests of supporters.

I have only three minutes to speak, so I will restrict my remarks. I agreed with much of what has been said in the debate today, particularly that there needs to be a long-term legacy; it is not just about what happens in the short term.

As I see it, there are four issues in relation to the legacy of the Olympic stadium. First, we need a world-class stadium; secondly, the stadium needs to combine community use with athletics; thirdly, it needs to provide diversity, by staging other types of events, including concerts, and fourthly, of course, the issue of viability has come to the fore. We know what has happened in previous instances with other Olympic games. Indeed, I was interested to see that, at the short-listing for the bidding, the chair of the company said that the company was obviously looking for an anchor tenant, but that it was interested in mixed use and that there should be a legacy for athletics. Those will be important considerations.

First of all, we need a world-class stadium. The contentious issue is whether the track should be retained. We have arranged our bid on the basis of commitments to the International Olympic Committee; indeed, the athletes’ letter, which was mentioned earlier, talked about that issue. Of course, the legacy company reaffirmed that.

In relation to athletics events and community use, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham ticked all the boxes as far as West Ham is concerned. The real concern is the decision by Spurs to demolish the stadium and replace it with an exact replica of the one they intend to build in Northumberland Park. In order to address the issue of the athletics legacy, Spurs has come up with the idea of refurbishing Crystal Palace. I do not have time to go into the details, but the reality is that it is not in the most deprived part of London, where the original commitment was given. We need to continue to reaffirm that commitment. Currently the proposal does not match the criteria.

The importance of other sports and cultural uses goes without saying. How do we ensure that schools and others can use the stadium in the future? There are real difficulties. The Spurs bid is very commercially oriented and I worry about how that would fit with the other types of events that are being suggested for the stadium.

Finally, on viability, the Spurs bid is viable; that is clearly the case and I am sure that, as has been suggested, the West Ham bid is also viable. However, we need to take account of the fact that it is very much option B for Spurs. Option A is the new stadium in Tottenham. That proposal has been cleared by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Mayor of London and the planning authority. It is also supported by Spurs fans, not only the “We are N17” group but supporters in N18, N9, and EN3 in my constituency and indeed in the whole of Enfield. There are long-term historical ties; the club would not be Tottenham Hotspur if it was not in Tottenham. Those are important considerations for the club.

However, in the interests of time, let me end by saying that I hope the Minister will indicate how the committee responsible for choosing the successful bidder is looking upon the different bids.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (in the Chair)]

I call Mike Gapes, who has two minutes in which to speak.