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London Olympics

I am delighted to have spared the time to give way to the hon. Gentleman, who makes an important observation. I will come back to that in the final section of my speech. Sadly, LOCOG is a private organisation that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. On 18 December last year, I therefore wrote to Lord Coe, chairman of LOCOG, asking many of the above questions and many more. To date, he has not seen fit to answer them. When asked on 24 January this year in the Select Committee whether he thought it"““appropriate for London 2012 to be so closely associated with a company like Dow Chemicals””," the Secretary of State replied:"““Obviously it is a decision for LOCOG, but it is a decision that, as a result of the controversy that we had last autumn, I looked into very carefully. After looking at it very carefully, I…wholeheartedly supported the decisions that LOCOG had taken.””" He went on to justify Dow's involvement, saying that"““they did not own Union Carbide at the time of the Bhopal disaster in 1985””—" a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk. In fact, it happened in 1984, but that was perhaps just a simple slip of the tongue by the Secretary of State. He also said that Dow did not own Union Carbide"““at the time of a final settlement with the Indian Government in 1989””" and added that"““that has been upheld three times in the Indian Supreme Court””—" twice, in fact—which made him confident that"““it was a very reasonable decision.””" Many commentators have found it frankly astonishing that both LOCOG and the Secretary of State seem to have taken Dow's claims regarding those cases at face value and repeated Dow's press lines verbatim. Surely the Secretary of State knows that when someone purchases a company, they purchase both its assets and its liabilities. Before the Minister repeats his Secretary of State's evidence to the Select Committee, where the right hon. Gentleman opined of Bhopal:"““I do not believe that Dow were responsible and I think we should support them as a company””," let me ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that Dow's wholly owned subsidiary, Union Carbide Corporation, is wanted by courts in India on criminal charges of culpable homicide? Because UCC is considered to be a fugitive from justice in India, and because Dow wholly owns UCC but has not produced it in court, I understand from legal advice that I have taken that that puts Dow in the position of sheltering a fugitive from justice. Does the Minister's own legal advice concur with that? Is the Minister aware that Dow Chemicals itself is a named respondent in public interest litigation in the Madhya Pradesh high court, seeking remediation of the abandoned Union Carbide factory site? Is he aware that Dow is a named respondent in a forthcoming curative petition in India's supreme court that aims to address the inadequacies of the 1989 civil settlement made by Union Carbide of $470 million—a figure that equates to approximately $600 per victim? Compare that with what happened in the Gulf of Mexico and the payout that the American Government demanded of BP. By some ironic coincidence, the hearings on the petition were granted on 28 February 2011—the same day the sponsorship contract closed—by a five-judge bench that included India's chief justice. Union Carbide is also subject to a civil action in the southern district court of New York. The action relates to the ongoing contamination in Bhopal through chemical dumping by the company in and around the factory. Significantly, the US court accepts that that is a distinct case from the 1984 disaster and that it has not been dealt with under any pre-existing settlement. In New York, Dow's wholly owned subsidiary UCC has pleaded that only Indian courts can order it to remediate the site; but in India, both Dow and UCC have pleaded that the Indian courts have no jurisdiction over them. Dow has consistently claimed to the Indian authorities that Dow and UCC are independent entities and that on those grounds Dow should be held immune from prosecution in relation to the Bhopal disaster. Documents made public in The Independent by Nina Lakhani two weeks ago, however, have revealed that Dow Chemicals secretly traded through a network of intermediaries to avoid a legal ban imposed after the Bhopal tragedy on the sale of UCC products in India. The documents prove that, far from being a separate company, Dow Chemicals controlled and manipulated its wholly owned subsidiary, setting prices and setting up supply chains to secure profits for Union Carbide products that in India were illegal. As Tim Edwards from the Bhopal Medical Appeal said,"““these documents...show Dow shielding UCC and obstructing justice. If however Dow is also misrepresenting its relationship with UCC, then it is obstructing justice and shielding itself from trial. Either way, LOCOG's insistence that Dow is a fit sponsor for Britain's Olympics appears perverse.””" In a letter addressed to IOC President Jacques Rogge, a copy of which was sent to Lord Coe, V. K. Malhotra, the acting president of Indian Olympic Association, stressed that there were active court cases against Dow. He said:"““A false campaign has been launched by the Dow Chemicals saying that the matter has been settled. It is not correct. The case is still pending in the court and no final compensation has been made.””" Why have LOCOG and the Government chosen to believe Dow Chemicals over the acting president of the Indian Olympic Association? Let me repeat the words of LOCOG's sustainability code:"““This means we want to do business with responsible suppliers and licensees; companies who treat their staff and sub-contractors well, who understand the nature of the products and materials they are supplying, and who recognise their responsibility to protect the environment and foster good relations with their local communities.””" When LOCOG awarded the sponsorship contract to Dow, was it aware of the pending criminal charges for culpable homicide against Dow's fully-owned subsidiary UCC in the Bhopal criminal court? Was LOCOG aware that Dow's fully owned subsidiary, UCC, was declared by that court as an absconder from justice as long ago as 1992, and that the company remains an absconder from justice to this day?