Yorkshire (Tour de France)

Julian Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have secured this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, particularly with your strong links to north Yorkshire and my constituency.

Without doubt, 2012 has been one of the greatest years in British sport. We have hosted the Olympic games in London. Our Olympians achieved the best medal haul since 1908—65 medals, including 29 golds. Super Saturday, 4 August, was undoubtedly Britain’s best athletics night. My noble Friend Lord Coe described it as “the greatest day” of sport that he had ever witnessed. It was a great Olympics for Britain and a great Olympics for Yorkshire, as we romped home with the largest number of medals for the UK.

Andy Murray has become the first British man since 1936 to win a grand slam. In golf, there was Europe’s nail-biting Ryder cup win, and Rory McIlroy has had another incredible year. There are many examples of success from across our country and our sports. Most importantly, the 2012 Paralympics were declared the greatest ever. They have had a massive impact on the perception of disabilities in athletics and in our society more generally. This has been a golden year of sport: it has produced not only brilliant results, but Olympic heroes who are inspiring people, young and old, to take part in sport and engage in exercise, which is the best way to stay fit and live longer.

The games have also shown that Britain is second to none in hosting and running great sporting events. Sport opens doors—it did so for me as a junior squash international, and it has done so for Britain this year. It has been the most incredible advert for our nation, character, values, companies and spirit. The Minister was one of the few people who were behind the most incredible games in history. I pay tribute to the work that he has done to ensure that the year 2012 will never be forgotten in world sporting history.

Of all the sporting achievements during this amazing year, cycling success stands out. I am told that the atmosphere in the velodrome was electric, although I could get tickets only for Greco-Roman wrestling. The roll-call of success could go on and on—Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and Laura Trott, to name but three, and of course the man who won the BBC sports personality of the year on Sunday, Bradley Wiggins. He received almost half a million votes, which again shows the popularity of cycling. It was a fitting end to 2012, during which he became the first Briton to win the Tour de France and his fourth Olympic gold. His success has inspired many to get on their bikes. Cycling is well and truly riding high: on the eve of the new year, Britain is at the top of its sporting game and is riding high on a sea of lactic acid and adrenaline.

Against that backdrop, we have had the most incredible news from Yorkshire. Last week, it was announced that the grand départ of the Tour de France, the world’s largest annual sporting event, will come to the north of England for the first time. The tour will wend and weave its way across Yorkshire on 5 and 6 July 2014, before coming to London and going on to France. It has been the most monumental achievement to win this event. Welcome to Yorkshire, the region’s tourism body, began working on a bid to host the tour, in partnership with Leeds city council, in 2011. The bid had fierce competition from Scotland, Barcelona, Germany, Utrecht and Florence. Yorkshire has had high-profile support from Mark Cavendish, Team Sky’s Ben Swift and Olympic gold medallist Ed Clancy, as well as three key historic Yorkshire riders—Malcolm Elliott, Brian Robinson and Barry Hoban.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

On Mark Cavendish’s support for Yorkshire’s bid, does my hon. Friend agree with his comment that Yorkshire

“is one of the most beautiful parts of not just England but the world”?

[Julian Smith]

I of course agree with my hon. Friend, and I hope to describe that beauty in my speech.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his timing and foresight. No sooner had he secured this debate than we are able to meet here to celebrate the success of Yorkshire’s bid. The people of Leeds and everyone in Yorkshire are really looking forward to witnessing the grand départ from the centre of Leeds during the summer after next. Will he join me in congratulating all those—he has mentioned some of them—who had the audacity and vision to make the bid in the first place? Does he share the hope of us all here that UK Sport, with the Government’s encouragement, will now back the bid, including with a bit of cash?

[Julian Smith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I shall come on to the Government shortly, but I want to pay tribute to his work and efforts in ensuring that that effort has always been a cross-party one.

As the right hon. Gentleman says, the bid had the full backing of local authorities in Yorkshire, the police, transport companies and the whole business community. A public campaign was launched to encourage people to show their support for the Yorkshire bid, and it has received more than 170,000 pledges. We have had great support from our regional media—the Yorkshire Post, ITV, the BBC, Thomson Press and Ackrill Media. Even French President Francois Hollande backed Yorkshire’s bid to host le Tour following a meeting with the Leader of the Opposition in Paris.

The Government have challenged the country to embrace localism. Yorkshire has taken that challenge and won the most incredible event for the UK and the north. Many people have been involved, and I again pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and many other right hon. and hon. Members and noble Members of the House of Lords who have shown their support. My hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) hosted the Paris organisers of the Tour de France, and anyone who knows him will know that that was a very good evening.

The person who did the deal—it is important to put this on the record—is Gary Verity, the chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, with his team, and also Tom Riordan, chief executive officer of Leeds city council. When I met Gary Verity and Christian Prudhomme, race director of le Tour, at St Pancras earlier this year, following their whirlwind tour of many of the jewels of Yorkshire, I saw how positive the chemistry and trust between them was. I therefore knew several months ago that we had a good chance of getting the deal. Gary and his team have delivered a great opportunity for Yorkshire, and have again proved that we must ensure that their future and funding is secure.

We do not yet know exactly where the grand départ will be—we will find out in the coming months—but one thing is certain. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) has said, the Tour will travel through some of the most beautiful towns and villages in the land.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate on the world’s biggest bike race. In 2014, its grand départ will be in west Yorkshire, an honour and a privilege of which we are all very proud. Full details of the route will not be announced until next month, but does he agree that challenging cycle routes—such as the UK’s longest gradient in the Calder valley, at Cragg vale—and the many hilltop villages around the Calder valley would be excellent venues for cyclists and would bring huge value to the local economy?

[Julian Smith]

I am sure that the Calder valley will be at the top of the short list for the route.

I regularly see cyclists from all parts of the world touring through the Yorkshire dales and Nidderdale, along such world-renowned routes as Greenhow hill outside Pateley Bridge. We could add the starting point in Leeds—Britain’s second financial centre—the industrial heartlands of south Yorkshire, the north Yorkshire moors, the historic cathedral cities of York and Ripon, the gateway to the dales of Skipton and the coastal roads of the east coast. From Harrogate to Selby, Keighley to Halifax, Huddersfield to Masham, the list of places the Tour could go is endless. We could host the whole thing in Yorkshire, not just the grand départ—perhaps, though, we are getting a little ahead of ourselves.

England’s largest county—God’s own—will wow the world and provide exceptional terrain and challenge for the grand départ and the first two stages. With world heritage sites in Fountains abbey and Saltaire and hundreds of homes and attractions, we will entertain the millions of visitors we expect to receive. In addition to the big attractions, we have thousands of smaller tourism businesses across our region already e-mailing to say that they are getting bookings for early July. Heslaker farm, Yorkshire Dales Ice Cream, Theakstons and Black Sheep will all give a warm welcome to visitors. The Tour stages in 2014, in Yorkshire, will be the best ever.

We also have some of the most passionate sports fans in the country. When the Olympic torch passed through Yorkshire, we had double the national daily average of people watching elsewhere in the country. With millions being invested by the Government in better broadband across north Yorkshire, we are creating the infrastructure to make the event a success. The Government have invested in the Northern Hub, bus services and other transport links. We are even asking our world famous Yorkshire bishops to assist with the weather.

This morning at Westminster, right hon. and hon. Members from across the House are forming a Yorkshire and UK Tour de France all-party parliamentary group to ensure that this place gives all the support that it can. There are 54 MPs from Yorkshire alone, which is nearly 10% of the House of Commons.

Before the Olympic games, people often said to me, “It is great, but it won’t mean much for Yorkshire.” Even the most hardened critic will now admit that they were wrong. I am talking about not just the feel-good factor of the games themselves or the economic boost from people coming to the UK, but the lasting legacy. With the Tour de France win, we will see Yorkshire as the centre of focus for 2014, with other parts of the UK benefiting as well. Less than two years after London 2012, we can look forward to another of the world’s biggest sporting events coming to this country, but this time it is coming to the north.

In 2007, the Tour stages in the south-east of England were worth £88 million. Bringing the grand départ to Yorkshire will be worth more than £300 million. For an area of Britain that has weathered the global economic storm but is finding things tough, the event will make a real difference. Businesses big and small across Yorkshire now need to be on red alert to take advantage of all the procurement and support services that will be needed. As Members of Parliament, we will provide all the help that we can, and I hope that the Government will play their part.

From ice cream to beer, hotel rooms to office support, there will be huge opportunities, but there will be broader potential to benefit, too. This is the most watched sporting event, with more than 3.5 billion viewers worldwide. More than 185 countries around the world show the Tour de France every year on 92 different television channels, with the last hour of every stage broadcast live across western Europe.

Yorkshire businesses that currently work abroad or that would like to do so in the future should think of this event as the biggest shop window there is. It will be a great advertisement to companies and people elsewhere in the world who have not heard of Yorkshire and who are looking for a UK base and who want to relocate in the north. It will also be good for the health of our region. We need to get out and exercise more; the Yorkshire Tour will vastly expand the number of bike routes and promote exercise and activity to all.

Yorkshire’s legacy plans are already being discussed and formalised. They include a bike bank, so all children in Yorkshire have access to a bike. There will be more investment in cycle lanes and cycle infrastructure across the county. There will be a cultural festival, too, celebrating both cycling and Yorkshire art and culture. Yorkshire has so much to offer the world, and we now have the chance to showcase that on an unbelievable scale. From literary buffs to entrepreneurs and from couch potatoes to exercise fanatics, le Tour has the potential to change lives.

We are incredibly proud and pleased to be hosting the Tour. There will be a celebratory dinner in Leeds on 17 January to which the Minister has been invited. There is much work to be done over the year ahead to plan the route. As I said at the start, this has been a team effort. Although UK Sport may not have been part of the Yorkshire bid, I was delighted that the Minister for Sport promised to back it 100% if we made it. Yes, Yorkshire has got this far on its own, but to make the very best of the event, we need Government support as well. Will the Minister outline the areas in which the Government will help? How do we get every Department behind this event? How do we ensure that we learn everything from the Olympics and London 2012 and transfer that to the Tour in 2014? How do we ensure that the regional growth fund, skills funding, roads funding and broadband are all right behind the Yorkshire Tour; that UK Trade and Investment makes the most of inward investment opportunities and exports; and, most importantly, that UK Sport, British Cycling and other bodies get behind this win financially?

We want to use this event to help rebalance the British economy, and we need the Government’s help to do so. As one of Britain’s great Sports Ministers, I am confident that my right hon. Friend will rise to the challenge, and I look forward to his response. I urge him to meet me, the bid team and other right hon. and hon. Members this week, and I look forward to his being part of this great event, as he was with the Olympics, showing that this Government are the Government for Sport.

I can already state with confidence that Yorkshire’s Tour de France stages will be a world-beating event. When everyone talked about a lasting Olympic legacy, this must surely be it. I thank London 2012 for setting the bar so high, but if it thought that the world got a great reception from the capital, just wait until it gets the Yorkshire treatment in 2014.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Gray, for calling me to speak.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. May I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on having his crystal ball to hand when he applied for this debate? It is great news that one of the world’s greatest sporting events will be starting in our county in 2014.

When I first heard that Yorkshire was going to bid for the grand départ, I thought to myself, “Mais non! C’est pas possible!” However, I did not reckon on the guile, the craft and the salesmanship of Welcome to Yorkshire. Everyone at our tourism body deserves credit for winning the bid. We have singled out Gary Verity, who did a fantastic job leading the bid, but I would also like to mention Peter Dodd, who did a fantastic job supporting Gary along the way. They should be rightly proud of what they have done; they have turned a rank outsider into a winning bid, and they should be congratulated. Welcome to Yorkshire has a history of delivering success, winning the award for the world’s leading travel marketing campaign three years running and winning the award for Europe’s leading travel marketing campaign twice. It beat worldwide brands such as Expedia and Thomas Cook, tourism organisations such as Visit London, and countries such as Spain and Denmark.

It was only when I met Gary, Peter and their contacts from France to discuss the bid that I reckoned that Yorkshire had a serious chance of securing it. However, I was disappointed to receive a straight bat from the Government when I raised the prospect of supporting Yorkshire’s bid in the House before the summer. I was a little more disappointed that UK Sport did not appear to want to engage with the bid, not even with a supportive letter. Well, it looks like UK Sport backed the wrong horse.

The 5 and 6 July will be fantastic for the north of England, and particularly for Yorkshire, as Leeds will host the grand départ. Two stages of the Tour will need to go somewhere, and I hope the Amaury Sport Organisation, the race organiser, is listening to the debate; indeed, I am sure it is. I want briefly to make the case for part of the Tour to come to my area.

[Julian Smith]

In French.

[Nigel Adams]

I thought about giving the whole speech in French, but I decided, for reasons of expedience, to deliver it in English.

Selby has a fantastic cycling history. It also has links with France going back more than 950 years, and I will list a few. Members will be intrigued to hear that the town of Selby was founded by a French Benedictine monk—in fact, it was Benedict himself—in about 1067. The fourth son of William the Conqueror, who was French, of course, would go on to become King Henry I, and he was born in Selby, becoming the only English-born Norman monarch. Selby abbey’s patron saint is St Germain, who was based in Auxerre, and evidence suggests he visited Selby.

[Julian Smith]

Was St Germain a cyclist?

[Nigel Adams]

I do not believe he cycled, but the name of Garmancarr lane, which is in the village of Wistow, is a corruption of Germain’s carr. As I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, carr means low-lying washland. The lane’s name therefore suggests that St Germain held land in the Selby area.

The scientist Smithson Tennant was assisted in discovering two chemical elements in 1804 by two French chemists. Cochrane’s shipyard built many of the ships and supplied some of the barge men for the D-day landings, which made the liberation of France possible—mind you, we also built the ships that helped us defeat the French at Agincourt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Robertson]

Let me explain it to the hon. Gentleman. It is not absurd. It is a different sort of event, because it is not run by the International Cycling Union, the governing body that regulates world cycling, but by a private company. That puts it on a slightly different footing. I will come in a minute to what we can do to help.

The reason why UK Sport does not allow a free-for-all is that if it did, people would just bid on their own and then turn around and ask Government to fund it. That policy has remained unchanged through successive Governments since the formation of the lottery, and there are good reasons for it. The major events panel at UK Sport is full of people who understand the issues, including David Collier, chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, who knows his way around major sports, as the results this week show. The board considers events, prioritises them and then sees how much support it can give.

We just launched the gold event series, which contains all the rules. The rules are there for good reasons, and they have produced a record number of major events. For the year 2015 alone, apart from the rugby world cup, we have secured the world artistic gymnastics championships, the world canoeing championships, the European hockey championships, the European eventing championships, the world rowing championships and the International Paralympic Committee world swimming championships. It is a successful and well-tuned machine. Clearly, something did not go right this time around, but that does not mean that the whole system is broken.

Moving to what the Government can do, I will absolutely ensure that UK Sport engages proactively with the bid team. It would help if the all-party group and MPs here in the Chamber took that message back. There was some indication that for commercial reasons, the bid team did not want to open up its books and show people what it was doing. Now that the bid is won, it is time for everybody to come together and work to deliver a successful bid. For my part, as the Minister, I will ensure that UK Sport offers the necessary technical support to help the work and bring British Cycling on board. I am sure that there will be no problems worth noting with that. It also backed the other bid, but we will ensure that the British sporting landscape is lined up behind the Yorkshire bid, and we will consider what can be done further. It will not happen, though, unless the bid team is now prepared to share all its financial details and various undertakings with UK Sport.

[Julian Smith]

I welcome the Minister’s offer to engage with the Yorkshire team. Can a meeting take place with him, me and the Yorkshire team to ensure that we frame things correctly for the months ahead?

[Hugh Robertson]

I am happy to give that undertaking, subject—as Ministers always say—to sorting out the diary. The beginning of next year is a pretty busy time, and I would not want it to drift back into February or March due to the difficulties of finding a spot. It would be a great help if he and others played a part in bringing that together.

It is a fantastic triumph; the challenge is how to take it forward from here. One thing I have learned from the 2012 process is that the successful delivery of major events rests largely on the strength of the partnerships created.

[Hugh Robertson]

I am grateful for that. We spent a lot of time during the autumn going around the world giving lectures on why London 2012 succeeded, and the first point in the lectures was the value of cross-party support. Amazingly, for a project so complex and difficult, it held from the period before the bid, in 2003-04, right through to 2012. As I often do, I pay enormous tribute to the work done by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who played a key part. Whatever may or may not have happened in the bid, it is important that we move forward as one from here.

To run through the various points raised by hon. Members, I hope that I have covered most of the points mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon. It is worth having a look at the publication called the “Gold Event Series”, which lays out clearly what UK Sport can and cannot do. It is a fantastic document. As I said, he should bear in mind that whatever may or may not have happened on this occasion, the team responsible for delivery in UK Sport has produced a list of events coming to this country the like of which we have never seen. It is a high-grade operation and has done well.

I pay tribute to the work done by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) on the rugby league world cup, and I thank him for it. It will be a great success not only for the country but for Yorkshire. He spoke about the Leeds angle and made some points about London. Now that the bid is secured, this would be an extraordinarily good time to approach the Mayor’s office and his major events department to see precisely what financial muscle can be brought to bear.

My hunch is that the Yorkshire team must have presented a balanced budget for the whole event to secure it. In my experience, it is inconceivable that such events are ever awarded if there are holes in the budget. So the contribution from London, which must have been covered somehow in that bid, will be important. If there is not a London contribution thus far, I suggest that that ought to be investigated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty talked about UK Sport support. I hope that I have covered that.

The evaluation of this sort of thing is done independently, because lottery money is involved, through an organisation called the major events panel, on which people such as David Collier sit. That panel generally makes good decisions. It was frustrated that it was not given enough access early on to make a balanced decision. I suspect that there is little point raking this matter over now. Congratulations to Yorkshire on winning. The real issue is how we move forward together from here.

[Julian Smith]

I agree that we should move forward now. Will the Minister ask officials to clarify how many people on that board, making decisions for the big event, come from the north, so that for the future we are getting a broad representation of our whole country?

[Hugh Robertson]

I could do that. Certainly, as with all UK Sport decisions, the home nations are represented because it is a UK body. Under the terms in which it was set up, there will necessarily be representation from Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, and there will be a group of members, some of whom will be independent and others who will not be, from this part of the world. I am not sure that there is a lot to be gained by raking over the coals in respect of where this went wrong, given the special nature of this bid involving a private organisation, and so on. British Cycling, which is not renowned for making mistakes, appears to have backed another bid because, as it told me, it could not get sight of the Yorkshire proposals early enough to make a decision.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) talked about transport planning, which is a fascinating issue. I suspect that, looking forward a couple of years from now at the extraordinary success of cycling and at the regrettably large number of people still being killed in collisions, we are getting close to a crossover point where there is such demand for cycling, in terms of closing roads and running amateur races at the weekend, that something pretty dramatic will have to happen. We will have to have a fairly major change of policy. If events such as this help to bring that about, that can only be a good thing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) spoke up for his constituency, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney). I think that the hon. Member for Eltham spoke for all hon. Members in his remarks about cycling.

Just to wrap it up, unless hon. Members want me to say anything in particular, I should like genuinely to congratulate Yorkshire. I am delighted, as UK Sports Minister, that we have secured another important, worthwhile major event. The team that pulled this off deserve all our congratulations. That said—I have learned this through London 2012—the successful delivery of a sports event of any size depends on the strength of the relationships and partnerships that are created. That is difficult. There were times in the run-up to 2012 when we had to bite our lips and wanted to lash out at somebody who was being frustrating, or we were getting a bit fed up with the bureaucracy or the time it took to do something. I am afraid that that is in the DNA of successful delivery of such events. It is important that the all-party group in particular advocates for the strength of the relationships and partnerships that will be needed to deliver this.

The key thing is that everybody, from this point forward, does everything possible. I assure all hon. Members in this Chamber that Government, UK Sport and British Cycling will do everything possible to ensure that this is a great success for Yorkshire and, I hope, one of the great grand départs of the Tour de France.