Olympics (Security) Debate

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Department: Home Office

Olympics (Security)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts
Thursday 12th July 2012

(12 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Baroness May of Maidenhead Portrait Mrs May
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I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for the Government’s approach to border security. When we identified that security checks had been relaxed and put to one side on many occasions between 2007 and 2011, we decided that as the job of the border forces is about border security, we would tighten up that security.

Philip Hollobone Portrait Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
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In failing to honour its contract, G4S has clearly let the whole country down. As a result of the Home Secretary’s swift and correct decision today, Britain will have more troops dedicated to venue security than deployed to Afghanistan. It is not enough to rely on penalty clauses in LOCOG’s contract with G4S. My constituents would want the Home Secretary and the Government to say that G4S should have no more Government contracts whatever until it pays every last penny of the additional costs of the extra 3,500 troops.

Baroness May of Maidenhead Portrait Mrs May
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My hon. Friend refers to the number of troops working on venue security, but of course the overall number of troops that I cited includes those who will be involved in specialist support and other operations as well.

A number of right hon. and hon. Members have made comments about G4S and its contract, but it is still contracted to LOCOG as a partner to produce a significant number of personnel for venue security. We want to work with it, and we want LOCOG to work with it, to ensure that it can deliver the number to which it has now committed.