London Olympics Bill

It will not be for me to consider, but last week we had a debate in Westminster Hall on elite sport and, when the Minister for Sport and Tourism replied to the debate, he said that that evening he was seeing Charles Allen, who was in charge of the nations and regions part of the Olympic bid. We are all trying to understand how we can participate. For example, I think that my constituency has the second best windsurfing in the world, in Sheerness, but of course we do not have a hotel facility for 80 people. Even if we built a hotel for 80 people, we would not be able to use it as a hotel once the windsurfing teams had gone. We do not want a white hotel. We want some system that will help us understand. If we want windsurfing, we must approach the international body first, then the British Olympic Committee and the British windsurfing organisation. We do not have the experience or expertise to understand the decision-making process, nor do we have the money. We are trying to understand what we can do. I hope the Minister will say in his winding-up speech that there will be a one-day conference so that all our chief executives, not just of the RDAs and councils, but of sporting bodies, can reach a better understanding of how we can participate. It would be good if the RDAs could be challenged to do an Olympic audit. It would be instructive to know how many swimming pools, tennis courts or equestrian centres we have that are of Olympic standard. If they are not suitable, our councils must find the money to build them so that we can attract those sports. If we do not do that, Paris will, and so will Brussels, Hamburg and Berlin. We are competing for overseas teams not just inside the United Kingdom, but across western Europe. Hon. Members will remember that our Athens team took accommodation in Cyprus and our team to the Sydney Olympics took accommodation in Brisbane for two years. That is big business and we need to understand how best we can participate. If the Minister is so minded, I should be interested in sitting on the Committee that will consider the Bill. The Olympics could be a huge catalyst for sport. There are three things that we do not have in the UK: there is no sports think-tank, there is no archive of every piece of sports film ever shot, and there is no sports museum. If there is some way that we can lasso the Olympics system in order to upgrade sport to the prominence that it should have but has never had, this is the one opportunity to do that. With regard to sport archive development, will the Minister convene a meeting with the British Library to ask it to serve as the digital infrastructure for the United Kingdom and make the Olympics its first priority so that we can gather all the films that have been made about sport in the United Kingdom? Because the British Library is the best in the world, perhaps the project could be extended to garner sports film from the whole world. As I have said before, the film of the 1948 Olympics, which was made on nitrate, is three hours long and has never been shown on television—I am still praying that BBC3 or BBC4 can find the time—was saved and digitised only because two people spotted it in a can about eight years ago in the British Film Institute library. We must not lose such material. Another aspect that has not been discussed because it is not entirely covered by the Bill is the legacy that we leave the world from the games. Those of us who celebrated the millennium remember 300,000 people in Pall Mall. Why can only 80,000 go to the opening ceremony? Why can the celebration not take place all over London? Why should it not be celebrated in every football stadium? Would it not be wonderful if, like the opening of the millennium celebrations which started with Sydney harbour bridge being lit up with fireworks, we lit up all the cities around the world that have hosted the Olympic games, sharing an opening ceremony with all those cities and bringing a family of cities into the Olympic movement? We should leave something so that people could say, ““Ah, yes, London did that””, much as we did in 1908 when we created the marathon. We also created the winter games in London in 1908 by freezing a swimming pool in the middle of the athletics pitch and skating on it. That eventually created the winter games of the Olympic movement. In 1948 we introduced the photo finish and starting blocks. We have contributed many things as legacy, but they are tiny. It would be good if we contributed something major. When de Coubertin set the marker for the games in 1896, it was for sport and arts. There were gold medals for poetry and music. We have a Nobel prize for literature, and it would be great if we could return to some aspects of the creative part of the Olympics. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham said that 120 nationalities would participate. Would it not be spectacular if there was some way in which we could celebrate their cultures and our culture together, beyond just sport? Once again, I commend everyone who has made this possible. It is the most exciting thing that will ever happen in my time. My son called me from school to say, ““Dad, dad, we can go.”” He is only 13, and we do go to lots of sporting events. I said, ““Son, I am not going to take you, I am going to watch you.””