Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Dearing (Crossbench). It was answered on Tuesday, 16 December 2008.

Olympic Games 2012: Languages

Question: My Lords, I declare an interest as the writer of a report for the Government. Following the point made by my noble friend Lady Coussins, does the Minister agree that there are times when advertising and promotion can be fruitful? Does he further agree that the Olympic Games would be a very fruitful time for the Government to finance extra advertising to promote languages to children and that the Government should make a budget available for that?

Answer: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a most useful suggestion and we are grateful for the work that he has done in the area of language education. We are still some distance away from the Games and the necessary preparations at the present time are all to do with structure. However, in due course they will be about the way in which London welcomes the peoples of the world to the Games. It will be enormously important that language and language skills play their part in that.

Secondary information