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Olympic Games 2012

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coe, for staging this debate. He may recall that, when we won the bid for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, I dropped him a note saying something along the lines of, "It’s great to know that you can still come in first". I congratulate him on the progress that is being made by the organising committee on time—ahead in some cases—and, one hopes, on budget. That said, I want to concentrate on arguments that are going on among the national bodies concerning two sports: shooting and the equestrian events. There is serious concern among those bodies about the venues chosen for those events. Shooting at Woolwich and the equestrian events at Greenwich may provide fantastic televisual locations but both have serious safety issues and little or no perceivable construction or sporting legacies—something stressed in our bid. Shooting around its national home at Bisley and equestrian events at, for example, Badminton, would have left far better legacies and provided better facilities for competitors and spectators, arguably at lesser cost. LOCOG rejected British Shooting’s independent assessment of the cost of developing a stand-alone site next to Bisley, which would have been around £30 million, some £12 million cheaper than the option at Greenwich. Accommodation was not an issue. Near to Bisley, Surrey University and planned development by Royal Holloway College to Olympic standards would have taken care of that. The proposed centre would have left a magnificent legacy, as well as having room for more spectators, for training in military marksmanship, for GB, England and Paralympic training, and normal commercial use. Information in this folder from the National Rifle Association was provided to both LOCOG and the Olympic Delivery Authority. If the noble Lord, Lord Coe, does not have a copy, I shall be happy to provide him with one. What lies at the heart of this debate is as simple as it is worrying. The allegation is that the decision by the Olympic Board on venues for shooting and equestrian events was based on reports commissioned by LOCOG from KPMG and the construction consortium, CLM, which contained partial, selective, misleading and inaccurate information about alternative venues such as Bisley, and ignored totally possible scenic sites such as Windsor Great Park. The only way to clear the air is for LOCOG to make full disclosure to this House and to the public of the unedited KPMG and CLM reports and associated papers used to decide these unsafe and unsuitable venues, together with details of associated construction and all other costs. The Audit Commission may be able to help on this. This will better ensure the success that we all want for shooting and equestrian events and all the other events in 2012. My noble friend Lord Berkeley, who unfortunately cannot be here, has asked me to raise a point about the use of rail freight to take the construction materials to the site. There is good experience in the building of Heathrow Terminal 5. The extra use of rail freight there cut down on the number of lorry journeys made to and from that site. There is a state-of-the-art logistics terminal on the site, but for the Olympics to gain all the credit they need, some better attention ought to be given to the sustainability aspect. The Rail Freight Group, which my noble friend chairs and of which I am a member, estimates that, through the use of rail, road deliveries to the Stratford site could be reduced by 50 per cent from an estimated 600 to 300 trucks a day at peak, and by 800,000 road deliveries over the whole construction period. Rail produces five times fewer emissions compared with road, and such savings would help the green image the Olympics are hoping to achieve.