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Olympic Games 2012

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Coe on obtaining this debate. I congratulate him a great deal more on all that he has achieved for the Olympics in the past three years. It has been a truly stupendous achievement. I apologise, therefore, that I am going to devote my six minutes to the bits that I am not happy with. When I declare my interests as captain of the House of Lords rifle shooting team and a member of the NRA, my noble friend will know what is coming. My noble friend Lord Moynihan said that it was crucial that the Games leave a sporting legacy throughout the United Kingdom. I am told that my noble friend Lord Coe said that we should not waste money on temporary venues, that there ought to be legacy and that venues should be cost-effective. If he did not say it, he should have done. Many other noble Lords today have mentioned legacy. Legacy is one of the foundation stones of the Olympic movement. Why, then, does LOCOG persist in putting the shooting at Woolwich and the horse riding at Greenwich? These two venues will cost in excess of £100 million. Both will be utterly destroyed immediately after the Games, leaving no legacy of any description. Alternative venues outside London would cost tens of millions of pounds less and would leave permanent legacies for both sports. What my noble friend Lord Coe said on the subject in his opening remarks concerned the concept of a compact Games. That is an important and powerful concept, and I entirely agree that it is a noble and proper ambition. Indeed, the Greenwich site is so compact that it will not be able to fit many spectators. However, even the great virtues associated with a compact Games must at some stage bend before the disadvantages that they bring to the two sports concerned here. My noble friend Lord Moynihan, when he contributed to the debate on a Question that I asked in the House last week, mentioned the benefits of being part of the Olympic experience. My noble friend was involved, as I was, in rowing, which is a high-energy, convivial sport, fuelled largely—and ahead of its time—by bioethanol. Shooting is not. It is a contemplative, careful sport. Self-control, self-discipline and concentration lie at the heart of it. People involved in shooting competitions will not participate in an Olympic experience before their competition has ended. Afterwards, they would love to join the party; but it is very much a facing-inwards sport, and there is not much to be said for siting them in an Olympic village until their competition is over. Various objections have been raised to the proposed siting of the Olympic shooting at Bisley. We are told that these are based on reports prepared by KPMG and others that have not been released. All that has been released is a series of half-truths and innuendos that have made it extremely difficult for those involved in shooting to raise reasonable arguments against the proposals. The sort of things that are fed out are those that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, repeated when he answered my Question. He said that there were problems with providing accommodation. LOCOG knows perfectly well that there are no problems with accommodation. There is surplus available, to Olympic standards, at two local universities—there is no requirement for any additional build. The perpetuation of these inaccuracies, if I may kindly call them that, is due entirely to the failure of LOCOG to publish the reports and indulge in a proper, open debate on the conclusions that it has reached. I wish it would: it is a stain on the otherwise brilliant escutcheon of LOCOG that it chooses to act in this way. Objections remain to the siting of the Olympic shooting at Woolwich. As far as I know, the safety objections have not been met. The shotgun shooting will spray lead shot over a wide area, much of it currently occupied by housing. I do not know whether it is proposed that people should be moved out of that housing for the duration, or that we should have enormous safety fences. I do not think that safety fences would work: you would probably have to build a 60-metre sand barrier or something of the sort to protect people from the shot. It is not clear how that will be dealt with. Nor is it clear how all the lead shot will be cleared up afterwards, or what the costs will be, notably in transport and landfill tax. It is not clear that it is acceptable to block all entrances but one to the local hospital at a time when there may be considerable need of it. There are real issues that must be dealt with concerning the siting of the Games shooting at Woolwich, and even more so with the decision not to site it at Bisley. Shooting is as popular a sport in this country as golf, but it has many fewer facilities. It is a wonderful training for young men in particular, because it trains them in safety, concentration and self-discipline. Of all the Olympic sports, shooting is in most need of legacy. We have now reached the three-year point, when reality must intervene over ambition. It is a time to be open, face the truth and change tack, if that is necessary, as I believe it is. As I said, my noble friend has achieved great things. He does not deserve this blemish on his record.