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Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012

My Lords, I am grateful to the Government for allowing me an additional few minutes in return for agreeing to delay this debate, originally tabled in my name before Christmas. Nevertheless, I shall be as swift as possible. I declare an interest as chairman of the British Olympic Association, a director of LOCOG and a member of the Olympic Board. A few years ago when Kate Hoey, a Member of Parliament and the Mayor’s Commissioner for Sport, and I co-chaired the independent sports review, we prefaced our 2005 report with the following observation: ""The success in Singapore has raised the bar. The United Kingdom now has less than seven years to develop a world-class sports policy which will form the basis of London 2012’s ultimate legacy—a fitter, healthier, more active nation"." Today’s debate provides an opportunity to monitor progress and I intend to concentrate my few remarks on the key building blocks of an Olympic sports legacy. A new policy framework is required—a policy framework to deliver a comprehensive, nationwide network of sporting opportunity. Through this network every man, woman and child must be able to play their chosen sport at their chosen level, and every child should have their sporting talent identified and the opportunity to develop it to its full potential. That requires a nationwide system with clearly accountable delivery mechanisms. Reacting to increased concern from the sporting community, the Government set up a sporting legacy board, on which I sit. Sadly, since Singapore 2005, it has had only two brief meetings. The Government have also established a further three boards and steering groups to look at aspects of sporting legacy, which brings to 11 the number of government boards designed to develop different aspects of the 2012 legacy. Inevitably, this level of bureaucracy leads to ineffectiveness. In this context, the Government announced in the pre-Budget Report that they would rationalise up to a third of the DCMS’s arm’s-length bodies. That is commendable, but can the Minister inform the House which sports bodies are to be streamlined under this policy, particularly those relevant to the London 2012 Games? Given the vital importance of the Minister for Sport working closely with Ministers from health, the Home Office and education, the proposal to create a new Cabinet Office cross-departmental division to co-ordinate initiatives provides a focal point for sport and recreation in government and is commendable. When Kate Hoey and I considered the sporting landscape during the months soon after the historic decision to award the games to London, we concluded that today’s patchwork-quilt policy based on luck and isolated islands of good practice needs to be replaced with a comprehensive system constructed on universal opportunity. Sporting success, as I am sure we will all agree, is systematic and should not, as at present, be left to chance. In 2005, Tessa Jowell, as the then Secretary of State at the DCMS, rightly described the public sector structure over which she and Richard Caborn presided as "a nightmare". While a great deal has been achieved by UK Sport to streamline the high-performance delivery mechanisms to our governing bodies, I still believe there is merit in housing the two separate quangos—one covering Olympic sporting excellence in UK Sport; the other mass participation in Sport England—together into one in order to share overheads, further streamline delivery to our governing bodies and, above all, deliver a pathway from participation to excellence. We must ensure that central to the Olympic sports legacy is having a world-class performance system in place that is robust, inspirational, resourced and sustainable; a system which covers the pathway from children, through juniors, through seniors to podium success; a system based on the requirements of volunteers, clubs, governing bodies, coaches and, above all, the athletes. My second point is that a further key pillar of an Olympic sports legacy is sports infrastructure spend across the United Kingdom. The report of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, was the most important on sport commissioned by the Government. We have an ageing stock of sports facilities. Many were built during the 1970s’ boom in capital investment and are now reaching the end of their economic lives. A Sport England report estimated that it would cost £550 million to bring sports centres owned by local authorities in England alone up to a safe and acceptable standard. The capital cost of maintaining the stock thereafter was estimated at between £144 million and £151 million per annum. While that analysis concentrated on local authority leisure facilities, the Football Association has calculated that it will cost some £2 billion to bring the stock of local authority playing fields, changing rooms, hot water and showers and pitch drainage up to a reasonable standard. The most important part of an Olympic sports legacy must be a new national sports infrastructure fund to renew the stock of local facilities across the United Kingdom. What is also a key aspect of this contribution to an Olympic sports legacy is the requirement for government to introduce a much-needed statutory requirement to ensure that there is adequate provision of sports facilities for sport and recreation in England and Wales. In Scotland, where such legislation exists, per capita funding for sport during the last decade was £46; in England, where local authorities are under no such obligation and are struggling to meet there statutory requirements, it is no surprise that the per capita spend was £19. Sports infrastructure spend is critical to an Olympic sports legacy. That is the catalyst to provide a sea change in opportunity for young people, inspired by the Games. This is even more important as we enter a new decade with nearly 1 million children who do not receive the basic two hours of sport and PE each week. The prospect of an afternoon of sport every week—say, a Wednesday afternoon—linked to governing bodies, clubs and local authority programmes, should be introduced throughout the United Kingdom and act as the catalyst for inter-school competitions and club membership throughout the country. This would be a substantial building block in the delivery of an Olympic sports legacy. For my part, I shall pursue the proposals outlined in a government report written by my noble friend Lord Coe and myself some 23 years ago, in which we said that we looked for greater uniformity of purpose and approach internationally in the fight against drug abuse. As a result, I shall introduce a Bill into your Lordships' House shortly. I should add, as a response to the comments made to the British Athletes Commission spokesman yesterday, that absolutely no proposal exists to allow the police to undertake random searches in the Olympic village or elsewhere. Under the legislation that I am drafting, the police would have to have reasonable grounds for believing that an offence had been committed under the proposed Act and obtain a warrant issued by a court before any search could be undertaken. In this context, random police searches would be wholly unacceptable to me. Finally, with just over 1,000 days to go and reinforcing the non-political approach that should always characterise sport, I led the British Olympic Association in strong support of Gordon Brown’s sports manifesto when the then Chancellor announced at Marlborough House in London on 25 October 2006 the following measures: to offer children four hours of school sport a week by 2010; to lead the world in 2012 as one of the fittest and most sporting of nations; to offer afterschool sports and links to a wide range of local sports clubs; to have every school in the country playing competitively in local leagues; to increase sports volunteering in schools and communities by 1 million; to provide every potential young sports star with extra support to help them to train and develop; and to ensure that every school should have access to playing fields and better sports facilities. Sadly, I cannot report to your Lordships' House that any of these measures have been delivered. We could start with a national volunteering strategy, which is absolutely central to an Olympic sports legacy. The hard work will start now—otherwise, the Olympic sports legacy from the Games will be housed solely, necessarily and exclusively inside the Olympic park and its satellite venues, which are being so admirably delivered by my noble friend Lord Coe, John Armitt, the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, and the first-rate private-sector-led teams. Now is the time to build on a coherent, well designed, fully financed and implemented nationwide Olympic sports legacy programme, with all 2012 stakeholders working together to support and contribute to its success.