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Olympic Games 2012

My Lords, everything to do with the London Olympics is a story. One of the most fascinating was the recent Sunday Times story about Type 45 destroyers stationed in the Thames during the Olympics to protect the Games. Under those circumstances, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Coe, on keeping his cool throughout and on initiating today’s timely debate. Progress on building the venues and preparing for the Games has been remarkable and I congratulate him and his colleagues at LOCOG and the ODA. As has been clear from the start, one of the key reasons London won the 2012 Olympics was the way in which it promised legacy. The Olympics would be the catalyst for the regeneration and development of the lower Lea Valley, the site of the Olympic park. I want briefly to highlight the opportunities and threats surrounding the regeneration and tourism legacy of the 2012 Olympics. Securing the legacy of the Olympics is a massive task and has myriad aspects. Many organisations are involved—not just LOCOG, the ODA, the mayor, the GLA and the DCMS, but also the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation, VisitBritain, the BOA, Sport England, the Legacy Trust and the LDA. Now a new kid on the block is being established to ensure the legacy for the Olympic park and Stratford City—the Olympic Park Legacy Company, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, who is eminently qualified for the job, with a chief executive, Andrew Altman, likewise well qualified, having been deputy mayor of Philadelphia. However, although the Olympic Park Legacy Company will cost £1 million per annum to run, it seems that this body will have no capital budget and will be there entirely to sell the virtues of the park to prospective occupiers. The mayor described its purpose as a vehicle to enthuse private enterprise to finance the legacy. I sincerely congratulate him on having the foresight to set up a legacy vehicle for the park, but is it really going to raise the money? The company will have particular responsibility in respect of the Olympic venues. This legacy company will have a wonderful new park the size of Hyde Park with no finance for its upkeep. It will have a beautiful stadium dedicated to athletics, which will be reduced from a seating capacity of 80,000 to 25,000, but no legacy tenants or finance for its upkeep, other than the £10 million lump sum promised by the mayor. Possibly there will be a national skills academy for sports and leisure industries and/or the English Institute of Sport on the site. There will be an aquatics centre, which will be a beautiful building but hugely expensive to maintain, costing £1 million per annum, but with no existing revenue funding. There will be a media centre, which may become the site of a new university. On the upside, there is a phenomenal transport legacy for the Stratford area, a well designed athletes village—with a deal, we hope, shortly to be finalised with a consortium of registered social landlords—a splendid velopark, the upkeep of which will be funded by the Lea Valley regional park for the next 21 years and, it seems, there will be a new academy located in the village. It is not difficult to see that unless there is strong leadership, the legacy is unlikely to materialise in the form promised. All that would be a challenge to any company, but more especially one that lacks its own sources of finance and has to negotiate with such myriad bodies. I have no doubt that the ODA and LOCOG will deliver to time—indeed, perhaps ahead of time—and within budget, but we on these Benches have real concerns about some aspects of the legacy. Should not the ODA be more explicitly involved in the delivery of the physical legacy ultimately in terms of adaptation of the venues, and so on? Should not its brief and lifespan be explicitly extended? There are question marks about the power of the legacy company. It is clearly taking over some functions from the LDA, but which ones precisely? Will it own and be able to dispose of land? How much autonomy will it in fact have? Then there is the question of what will be its relationship to the strategic regeneration framework for the area and the five surrounding boroughs. We had an extremely useful symposium earlier this week organised by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, about the Olympic legacy. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, was there, too, extremely helpfully. The Barcelona Games were described as the gold standard in terms of legacy. Mark Bostock of Arup made a very interesting contribution in asking what will happen when the curtain comes down on the Olympics. He emphasised that we must look beyond the park and its immediate environs and see the park fitting into the lower Lea Valley and beyond. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and the five boroughs have articulated such a vision: Water City, which would encompass a much broader area including Poplar, the lower Lea Valley and Canary Wharf. Will the Olympic Park fit into this? Will the new six neighbourhoods, which will expand into the surrounding areas, fit into that vision? How will the legacy company, with its limited territorial spread, achieve that? The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has also made a powerful case—I am sure that he will again today—for a social entrepreneur to be on the board of the legacy company. The composition of the board will be extremely important. The British tourism framework review document published earlier this year, as well as arguing for a full agency to promote English tourism, makes a powerful case for more government support to take full opportunity of the 2012 London Olympic Games. The Government anticipate that the London Olympics will provide a major boost to the sector. The framework review makes the case that we cannot successfully promote the UK as a tourist destination in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics without additions to VisitBritain's promotional budget. My noble friend Lord Lee and I have been on the warpath for at least two years, but the Government seem to be completely deaf to pleas for more funding to promote Britain as a destination in the run-up to the Olympics. The Sydney Games were exploited by Australia as an overall marketing event, as well as a hugely successful global sporting event, but they had government money to help them. It is hardly surprising that the industry does not understand the logic of cutting funding for tourism marketing in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. If further funding is not received, Britain will almost certainly miss the opportunity to maximise the economic and social benefits that the tourism industry has on offer. I very much hope that the Government will change their mind.