Olympic Legacy (East London)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Friday 8th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you for the first time, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is also a pleasure to stand here united with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), my fellow Hackney MP, to endorse what she said.

I wanted to add a couple of perspectives from my constituency to the point that my hon. Friend made very effectively about jobs. As she said, there are good news stories from the Olympics. Regardless of anything else, 800 new homes are a good thing, but she is right that the Government’s policy is putting that at risk. The homes need to be affordable for local people, and we also need to watch that they are not sold to overseas landlords. We need to ensure that they are owned within the community, or certainly in the UK, even if they are let.

My constituency has a really great legacy in the Copper Box, a multi-sport facility that will host the London basketball team. Events are already happening, so that is a direct legacy. It is run by Better, the organisation that runs the borough sports facilities, so it is accessible to local people. iCITY has brought in BT Sport as the first anchor tenant in the media centre, and it is giving Sky Sports a run for its money. I met BT Sport only this week to push it on the jobs front, and I am watching that closely.

There are some excellent small businesses. Hackney Pearl, a fantastic restaurant and café in my constituency, was an early believer in the Olympics. It has struggled because infrastructure changes have not happened as quickly as they should after the Olympics to give it the boost it needs, but it is an example of the interest of local businesses in the potential legacy that my hon. Friend highlighted.

In the seconds I have remaining, I want to make a point about jobs. The borough is working closely with local companies to ring-fence jobs locally for Hackney residents, including in the construction of any new facilities. The Ways into Work programme is an important step that provides one-to-one support for local people. The support is holistic, involving everything from interview skills upwards.

However, the key thing that my hon. Friend highlighted, which I reiterate to the Minister, is that we and others are watching what is happening. We need an audit of employers who have promised to recruit and employ local people, because without that, they will not do so. There were scams in Olympic employment. It took me a while to uncover them, and by that time it was too late to do anything about them. For example, people pretended to be local.

[Ms Abbott]

One scam was that people who had moved very recently to Hackney were counted as Hackney residents.

[Meg Hillier]

If I had time, I could detail more scams, but there certainly were scams. I know that this is not the Minister’s remit, but it is vital that he takes the point back to his colleagues. There needs to be an audit of where people came from. I will happily give him more details, but I am anxious, as my hon. Friend is, to hear the Government’s official response.

My hon. Friend and I agree that there have been some great benefits from the Olympics, but jobs and skills are the real prize. It is the legacy that we are both watching like hawks.