Olympic Games 2012: Legacy

Lord Mawhinney Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawhinney]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has done both this House and the Government a great service by introducing this debate. If one looks at the place of the east end of London in the history of our country over the past 50 years, it would be true to say that, until recent years, no one comes out of it with any great credit. It has been one of the great unobserved areas of our country. Happily, that is changing and will continue to change, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater made clear.

The second reason I wanted to be here today is to pay a personal tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. He is the epitome of what has caused the change in the east end of London. He is rightly recognised around the world as one of its foremost social entrepreneurs, and he can point to overwhelming evidence which lends great credence to what he has said to us today.

In the time that is available, I want to concentrate on only one lesson. That does not mean the others are not important but colleagues have already addressed them. I want to look at that part of the Motion which refers to lessons that can be learnt more broadly and concentrate on only one. We can talk about a lasting legacy and occasionally get the feeling that the Government, the public or local government have the responsibility for it. It is none of these. Trust the people. They have the ideas and the aspirations, and in the east end of London they have the multicultural base on which to build and develop.

This is a good forum in which to say that it is a mistake to believe that lasting legacy is solely or, indeed, overwhelmingly guaranteed by the spending of public money. It is much more important than the spending of public money. The lesson I would like to draw from the Games as a foundation for lasting legacy is that which we have learnt from my noble friend Lord Coe and the then Mr Deighton. It is the lesson of leadership. We rightly celebrate the athletes and para-athletes and we rightly celebrate those who worked on the ground to make the Games an enormous and impressive spectacle and such a happy occasion. But there needed to be firm leadership and a broad-based understanding of what constitutes leadership, in that it is not all in the public sector or the private sector. It is a sensitive combination for the common good. That leadership is frequently not as available in our society as many of us would like, so I want to thank the people who had the responsibility for organising and delivering the Games on time and on budget, neither of which is inevitably the consequence of activities in our nation.

However, Government and Ministers have a role to play in all this, but it is not the role of providing exclusive leadership. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, is perhaps the most sterling example of the fact that you do not have to look to Government to lead renaissance and change. I would like to suggest that the role Ministers should play is that of—if I may use a rather inelegant colloquialism—banging heads together. It is to say to people, “Your mindset is wrong. Your locality cannot move forward unless you address the mindset”. Those who are involved locally find it hard to do that, so they need guidance from outside. Sometimes Ministers need to move in to resolve turf wars which hold up progress on the ground. Sometimes they need to move in and say, “I understand your focus on the detail, but actually the bigger picture is this, and this is what we should be doing”. Sometimes Ministers need to say that the relationship between Government, local government and the private sector is simply not good enough and needs to be changed.

What we have learnt from the Olympics is that change creates challenges. I would say to Ministers and to my noble friend: in case you think there is nothing for you to do, take all of your colleagues down to Bromley-by-Bow and let them see what has emerged from virtually nothing. It is one of the most impressive displays of social entrepreneurship anywhere. We are focusing on the European Union these days and it is more impressive than anywhere in the Union. The question to be asked is this. What head-banging needs to be done to enable Bromley-by-Bow to move even further ahead and to see that being replicated across the whole of the Lower Lea Valley? Stratford station is sitting there. Perhaps my noble friend would like to encourage one or two of his colleagues to ensure that the station is actually used, and used properly. I declare an interest because I was the Secretary of State with responsibility for the Channel Tunnel and the building of Stratford station.

We are talking about how the Olympic stadium might be used in the future. It might get tied in to football. It ought to have some tie-in to athletics, and maybe a little head-banging needs to be contemplated by my ministerial colleagues, and the encouraging of more investment in the facilities. The private sector can provide the money but sometimes it needs a little bit of help from Ministers to clear the ground to enable that money to be spent effectively.

My lesson for the legacy of the Games is that we ought to focus on and encourage real, sensitive, community-led leadership.