Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)
Debate between Louise Mensch and Damian Collins(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Louise Mensch
I will be glad to step into the breach. My hon. Friend and colleague on the Select Committee was with us when we visited the aquatics centre. Does he agree that it will also be a great inspiration for local people to know that after the games, the centre will be available for their use and the use of the people of London? It will provide the community with a phenomenal swimming facility where none currently exists and where one is sorely needed.
Damian Collins
I completely agree. The aquatics centre is not only a stunning and iconic building, but a venue for elite athletes to compete where one is badly needed. That will benefit not only people in east London, but communities with good access to the Olympic park. My constituency of Folkestone will be only 55 minutes by high-speed rail from the Olympic park, so athletes there will also benefit. However, there will also be a community aspect. The fact that parents can take their children swimming at the aquatics centre at the Olympic park after the games is a wonderful way not only to encourage young people to start swimming, but to inspire them through their surroundings, as they will know that they are swimming in a pool where some of the greatest swimmers in the world have competed. When the Select Committee visited Munich, as part of our inquiry into football governance last year, we saw that the aquatics centre from the Munich games is still used even now, more than 30 years later, by the people of that city as an important and cherished community facility. That is a vision for the future of what the aquatics centre in the Olympic park in London could be like.
Damian Collins
My hon. Friend is right. Such facilities are often most needed in harder-to-reach economic areas. Sporting provision in those areas need not be expensive. The success of the midnight basketball leagues, which have been operating in major urban centres in the United States, is one example. Programmes like that are not expensive to deliver, and they can do a huge amount of good.
So far the debate has not focused on the business legacy, and I want to record my admiration for the initiative to create a business embassy at Lancaster house. Corporations and business people from all over the world will come to London to be part of the Olympic games. It is excellent that there is a venue where they will be able to learn more about what this country has to offer in the long term: about the resources and facilities that exist here, and about the businesses that are ready to take advantage of their being in London and demonstrate, for instance, the way in which we can develop our trade routes and interests around the world.
I note that two days of the session at the business embassy will be dedicated to the creative industries, in which the Select Committee takes a particular interest. We should all be proud of that, because it reinforces the message that the Government are sending in their campaign to market everything that Britain has to offer the world in the run-up to the games. Of course the games themselves will be a great showcase for the United Kingdom and London, but we also want a legacy that will last for many years after they have ended. We want them to serve as a massive advertisement for everything that the country has to offer.
Louise Mensch
A couple of Members have described themselves, most self-effacingly, as “not a great sportsman” or as “not having much to do with sport,” but will not the legacy of the Olympics also cover the cultural Olympiad, to which those Members might feel themselves to be more suited? As my hon. Friend has said, there are marketing and tourism opportunities, and opportunities for the creative industries. The Olympics do not exist in a vacuum. Their impact on our whole economy will be enormous, and people will be able to involve themselves in many activities besides sport.