Olympic Games and Paralympic Games 2012

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for attributing success in securing this debate to me. That comes as something of a surprise since I was grateful to the usual channels for securing a debate on this subject before the general election. But a two-for-the-price-of-one Motion on the Order Paper is always worth while, especially when it comes with a brilliant maiden speech from my noble friend in sport, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. First, I declare my interests: I am chairman of the British Olympic Association, a director of the London Organising Committee and a member of a number of International Olympic Committee and European Olympic Committee commissions and committees.

The debate will focus on progress made towards the successful hosting of the London Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. The theatrical analogy sometimes employed is that it is the Government who are building the Olympic theatre, the London Organising Committee which is putting on the show, the British Olympic Association which selects, manages and leads the British actors and actresses word perfect, and the mayor, who has the legacy for the Olympic park when the curtain falls.

It is right that we can report that most of the focus in this debate is on how well all four players comprising the four members of the Olympic board are progressing. The starting point is the host city contract signed between the mayor, the British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee. The contractual undertakings, including the duty to establish the London Organising Committee on which both the mayor’s office and the British Olympic Association are represented, have been honoured. The Government, with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, through the Olympic Delivery Authority, have ensured the efficient delivery of the sites under the leadership of John Armitt and David Higgins. The staging of the Games is making progress, on time and on budget, within the £2 billion LOCOG budget which was secured under the outstanding and astute direction of my noble friend Lord Coe and without recourse to public money. His team is making good progress.

The British Olympic Association has announced that it intends to take a full team to the Games. Despite signing away the rights in early 2005 for significantly less value than the income required to undertake its duties as a host nation Olympic committee, the BOA has, under the direction of its chief executive, Andy Hunt, and chief commercial officer, Hugh Chambers, managed to strengthen its balance sheet, governance and organisational structure from what only six years ago was to many a glorified travel agency and which today is a strong national Olympic committee. It is in line with the NOCs of Germany and the United States, where it plays a key role in the working of the International Olympic Committee, the wider Olympic family and, as evident by the Minister for the Olympics and Sport, Hugh Robertson, in choosing to make his inaugural speech at the new BOA headquarters in Charlotte Street last week, it has taken a seat at the top table of policy formulation and administration in British sport.

The announcement last week that the British Olympic Association would have a powerful athletes’ commission demonstrates that it will place the interests of the athletes first and will ensure that their interests are always at the heart of policy formulation within the organisation. The Minister announced to the press that he would be looking to the BOA to consult on a wide range of sporting issues as he implements the far-reaching changes to the structure of sports administration throughout the United Kingdom.

In this work, we at the British Olympic Association will support the Government in a constructive and comprehensive way. It is written into the Olympic charter that the national Olympic committees should be constructive in their engagement with government. It is also a key component of the IOC objectives that the autonomy of a national Olympic committee should be respected by government. I believe that on both those issues significant and positive progress has been made with the new Government since 9 June.

Today, we also have far more representation than ever before on International Olympic Committee and European Olympic Committee boards. I know that your Lordships will be delighted that in recent days Sir Clive Woodward has been appointed to the International Olympic Committee coaching commission, the Entourage Commission. Adam Pengilly, one of the skeleton athletes in the winter Games, is the first to be elected by his peer group from this country to membership of the International Olympic Committee. At the European level, Andy Hunt, chief executive of the BOA, has been appointed to the EOC Games Commission and Jan Paterson, also from the BOA, has been appointed to the European Olympic Committee’s Sport for All and Youth Commission.

Finally, in the context of the theatrical analogy, the major’s office, under the leadership of Ken Livingstone and, more recently, Boris Johnson, has been consistently supportive in prioritising the Games as a showcase for London and for sport in 2012, and for preparing the way for the noble Baroness, Lady Ford. I am confident that all parties will retain the all-party approach to the Games, about which the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, spoke and which was a feature of the debate in your Lordships' House in 2004. That debate unanimously supported the British Olympic Association’s proposal to bid to host the Games in London in 2012 and did much to persuade Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, and his Cabinet to support the bid and, in the case of Tony Blair, to undertake so much work to secure the Games with his presence and personal contribution in Singapore when the decision was made.

If I were to be asked what are the two major challenges to a successful Games, I would say security and transport. Noble Lords have addressed these items, not least my noble friend Lord Patten with his expertise and eloquence. Despite the challenges, I believe that everything possible is being done to minimum the risks that they pose. However, there is a third area of concern and it is one shared by many noble Lords in their contributions today. That is where I will focus my remaining comments—the area of legacy. The Games will of course be judged by the British people, not primarily on the magnificent Olympic park or the tremendous support of the volunteers, although these are key and critical issues. As has been pointed by the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, they will be judged by the success of Team GB and a strong medal tally, boosted by the sound of the national anthem being played at medal ceremonies.

The next generation will judge the success of the Games by the legacy endowed to the people the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. The legacy from the Games will come in two areas of activity. The first is the urban regeneration legacy from the Olympic park. In too many countries that legacy has led to expensive white elephants populating the landscape and budget deficits of host cities for decades after the curtain falls on closing ceremonies. I believe that that will not be the case in London. If I am right, that will be directly the result of the strong oversight of the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, as chair of the Olympic Park Legacy Company and the day-to-day leadership provided to that organisation by the chief executive, Andrew Altman.

The noble Baroness shares the vision of many of us that the Olympic park needs to become a great place for events, a centre for high performance, a resource for community sport, a focus for active recreation, a magnet for sports tourism and a catalyst for education, Olympic legacy and sports-related research and culture. It needs to be bold in its ambition and its aspiration. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, fully understands this challenge. She has worked hard with the British Olympic Association to ensure that sport was properly placed at the heart of this programme—for sport had been lacking in written documentation when she arrived and in the many speeches on this subject.

Working with the mayor’s office, the Olympic Park Legacy Company is creating a signature urban park, which will build communities based on family housing—both private and public sector—to be a catalyst for regeneration and convergence and a premier centre for sport and leisure. Let us take the handball venue, from which a multi-purpose facility can emerge after the Games to cater for commercial and community use and elite sport. It can also be a centre for economic innovation: for example, the vast media centre can house research, media and university facilities. They are all capable of holding a mirror to the diversifying economy of London.

In all those areas, the new Government can rightly shine a torch on how the private sector can play a greater role and on how savings can be made on the delivery mechanisms while not impacting the front-line benefits of this vision. Every step should be taken based on planning, promotion, partnerships and cost-effectiveness so that the reinstatement and handover of the facilities during the period from 2012 to 2014 can be transformational, delivering activation and regeneration. I hope that the same approach will be applied to the sports venues outside the park, from Eton Dorney to Weymouth, to take two examples. For the ministerial team and the mayor that is a major challenge and I hope the Minister will comment on it. If they empower the Olympic Park Legacy Company, those aspects that I have outlined today of the legacy challenge will be secure.

A second aspect to legacy is sports legacy. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, echoed the concern of many about the lack of sports legacy to date. The delivery of a successful sports legacy from the Games will, I contend, be more challenging. To date, five years of multiple committee work with red threads, a lot of papers and cross-departmental bilaterals led by civil servants have delivered very little of substance save for some rays of outstanding good practice—for example, in the case of swimming which has been alluded to—to dampen the voices of the critics who fear that the Olympic Games will leave no more sporting legacy than tennis has derived, on occasions, from Wimbledon following a wet August when the rackets which were dusted down in the enthusiasm of the championships are put back in the cupboard until next year.

A week ago, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, who was right to focus on this, Sport England, the body created to ensure that more people participate in sport as a result of the 2012 Games, announced a drop in participation among some absolutely key groups. The National Audit Office report contained the following criticism:

“In the North East and London, participation fell across all priority groups, with London showing a decrease in women’s participation of 9 per cent”.

That is despite London being the host city of the Olympic Games 2012. The National Audit Office concluded:

“Linking financial information to performance information is crucial for the Department and for Sport England’s Board in determining the value for money of Sport England’s activities and making strategic decisions”.

This situation is wholly unacceptable for a nation enthused by sport, by the World Cup and by the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Five years ago, Kate Hoey and I chaired an all-party group and the Independent Sports Review was produced. We reviewed the multiplicity of quangos involved in the delivery of sports policy and we wrote:

“The hands-on running of sport and recreation in the United Kingdom is now largely undertaken by the five National Sports Councils, nine Regional Sports Councils in England and nine Regional Sports Boards in England”.

It was described by the Olympics Minister of the time as an organisational nightmare. The use of those quangos allowed Government to influence matters from a distance, keeping problems at arm’s length.

Last week, the Minister took the final step in a reform process which, in my view, had been long overdue since the introduction of the lottery by the Conservative Party under Prime Minister John Major. It has since been diverted into a range of government initiatives; it has deviated from the original pillars and spawned a bureaucracy. The decision made by Hugh Robertson, the Minister, and echoed by the Minister on the Front Bench today, to return the lottery to its original objectives and establish a one-stop shop with three divisions—the Youth Sports Trust, Sport England and UK Sport—can deliver a lean, efficient and focused one-stop shop, working with the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association to empower the governing bodies, clubs, schools and volunteers of the country. Such empowered people are the only people capable of arresting the decline in sporting activity in our host city. Bringing together those three divisions will be an important step forward. I hope that Hugh Robertson, the Minister, who has already earned significant respect from all sides of the House and support from the world of sport, will chair the new body in its initial years. His authority will be needed to bring about the process of change necessary to provide a sports legacy from 2012.

In conclusion, the policy for sports legacy should focus on a few well targeted and clearly defined sports legacy objectives. I know and commend the work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, in this context. Competitive inter-schools sports leagues and nationwide school games, based on primary and secondary schools, need to be included. That also was announced by the Minister and I warmly welcome that initiative. I wish him and the Government every success in delivering an urban regeneration legacy and a sports legacy worthy of the Games.