Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

One of the extraordinary things about how much has been achieved in preparation is that the world is different in quite a number of ways from that of 2005. My hon. Friend is entirely right that the security picture has changed enormously and, I am afraid, for the worse, so it has required much more attention, but the other big change is the economic climate, and many funding issues have been influenced by the fact that the Olympic facilities have had to be built in the teeth of a severe global recession. That has also proved very difficult. One thing that we discovered in talking to previous organisers of Olympic games was that several could not have done so had their work coincided with a recession as deep as the one that we have experienced.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I give way to my colleague, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I commend the work of the hon. Gentleman’s Committee over several years. He knows that 10,000 athletes will be guarded by 40,000 police officers and security agents, but during his deliberations was he satisfied that the 23,000 private security agents who are going to be involved had been properly trained to deal with the situation?

[Mr Whittingdale]

My understanding was that 23,000 was the figure for the number of security personnel, of whom a substantial proportion will be from the armed forces, but the Minister may be able to explain.

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[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.