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Olympic Games 2012

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the British Olympic Association and in so doing I thank my noble friend Lord Coe, on whose LOCOG board I also serve, for securing the debate. My noble friend exemplifies the truism that the success of London 2012 will be based on seamless co-operation between the main stakeholders, whose job it is to provide the athletes with lifetime memories of a great Games. In that context, I warmly welcome this debate, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Loughborough, has made her maiden speech. The contribution that she and UK Sport, which she chairs, have made to the success of British athletes is exceptional. Since Beijing, the British Olympic Association has built strong working relations with UK Sport, culminating in a joint presentation at our annual meeting yesterday. I can assure the House that, despite press leaks to the contrary, the BOA’s finances are robust. The investments that we made last year in a wide-ranging restructure of the organisation allow us to move from a magnificent result for Team GB in Beijing to a platform for success in London 2012 and beyond. This will not be a 100-metre sprint; it is a marathon. I do not deny that at times during 2008 I felt as if I was rewiring a plane in flight, but with the success of Team GB in Beijing we reached the next destination on our strategic path. The seamless co-operation that we have achieved with the support of LOCOG and UK Sport is a major step forward along this road. Now we are working together to ensure that Team GB is fully funded. In his 2006 Budget, Gordon Brown committed to fund a six-year programme to support British athletes to the value of £600 million, a figure that the British Olympic Association, UK Sport and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport saw as necessary to deliver the full potential of our Olympians and Paralympians in London 2012. Sadly, last year that commitment was underfunded by some £50 million, while the lifetime budget of government spend on civil servants working in the ever growing Government Olympic Executive increased by a sum approaching the shortfall. In line with our obligations to the International Olympic Committee charter, the BOA will continue to seek ways to provide all Olympic sports, including the winter sports, with the best financial platform possible for the athletes to compete at their best level at the Games. This is essential not only for their success but, as the noble Baroness said, for the inspiration that sporting success delivers as a catalyst for wider participation among young people across the country. We must work together to ensure that priority spend is on athletes. Where urban regeneration is concerned, the Government should be congratulated on their support for the vision first laid out by the British Olympic Association under the leadership of my predecessor, Sir Craig Reedie, and the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to use the Games as a catalyst for the regeneration of one of the poorest parts of London. As a result, the Games will bring an unprecedented level of investment to regenerate and reinvigorate the East End against a timetable that, uniquely, no political party can abandon or delay, for the world’s finest athletes will be ready to compete after the opening ceremony. To match the success of the work on urban regeneration, we now need to turn our attention to a fully funded sports legacy. With the same spirit of the all-party support and co-operation that was a feature of the historic debate in your Lordships’ House—those who participated in it provided the Cabinet with evidence of the unanimous commitment of your Lordships to bring the Games to London—we now need to address a sports legacy that goes beyond what has been described as a patchwork quilt made up of a multitude of well intentioned and sometimes excellent individual programmes to a focused set of policies to ensure that the Games leave a sporting legacy throughout the country for the able-bodied, the disabled and, in particular, young people. It is their talent that needs to be identified and developed to the full, so that their children one day can look back and say that, had the Games not come to London, their generation would never have seen the necessary upgrading and construction of new sports facilities across London and the rest of the United Kingdom, a nationwide rollout of new play areas and playing fields and the full engagement of clubs, schools and local authorities in this effort to enhance and capture the enthusiasm of young people through competitive sport. To that end, today I am delighted to accept the invitation from Kate Hoey, the Mayor of London’s Commissioner for Sport, to work with her on the London Community Sports Board to deliver this vision for Londoners. Building on the work with which I have had the privilege to be involved as Minister for Sport and MP for Lewisham East, we must get inner-city kids out of gangs and into teams. Sport can play a key role in taking kids off the escalator to crime. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has taken a lead on sports legacy in London. I hope that all political parties can come together in a common cause to make sure that we achieve a step change in the provision of both Olympic-level performance and active participation in sport and recreation, not only in London but throughout the country.