Olympic Games 2012: Traffic

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I can assure the House that Ministers of the Crown do not have any privileges in regard to the use of the Games lanes, with the exception of when advised to use them by the security services, and that will apply to very few Ministers indeed.

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, how can the House have confidence in all the contingency plans here and there when, if we are to believe today’s press, a coach driver taking an Olympic team to the stadium could not find his way and took four hours to get there? He could not read a sat-nav and apparently was directed to the stadium only when someone managed to find it on their mobile phone.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I expect all noble Lords have had a sat-nav moment. I certainly have in my driving career. LOCOG knows where all the Olympic coaches operated by it are on the Olympic network and, if something goes wrong, LOCOG will know. I do not know the full details about the coach to which the noble Lord refers, but I can assure noble Lords that LOCOG has a good system for managing the coaches.