Business of the House

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He will have an opportunity next Wednesday when we debate amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill to develop his arguments at greater length. The steps we are taking are designed precisely to do what my hon. Friend has suggested—to make work pay and remove some of the perverse disincentives from the system that we inherited.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the sustainability of the London Olympic games following the resignation this morning of Ms Meredith Alexander as the sustainability commissioner? She said that she resigned in protest against the commission being used to justify the sponsorship deal between the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and Dow Chemical. She has made particular allegations about irregularities, saying that 12 out of 13 commissioners knew nothing about a report that was claimed to be produced by the commission.

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport was asked about this earlier by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and gave the Government’s response. As the hon. Gentleman knows, Dow did not own Union Carbide at the time of the tragedy and I do not think there are good reasons, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, for taking the action that was taken.