London Olympics Bill

I, too, would like to praise all those involved in the bid, but I would like specifically to single out those who have not been mentioned by name earlier. Over the past few days, we have discussed the difficulties involving our cleaning staff here in the House who have been campaigning hard for an increase in their pay. I want to pay tribute to all the back-office staff—secretaries and the like—who have worked so hard on the Olympic bid and who have not been named. Yes, a lot of good work has been done by Lord Coe and his colleagues, but without the support staff, none of it would have happened. So I want to put on record my praise for them. Many right hon. and hon. Members have commented on the tremendous opportunities offered by holding the Olympics and the Paralympics. I hope that we take the opportunity to embrace what has come out of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the good will that exists to ensure that people with disabilities are rightly and fully included in our wide-ranging society. In that regard, we must ensure that we give equal weight to the Olympics and the Paralympics. My constituency can look back for inspiration to the 1920s, when Bob Leavers from Longton was a swimmer of some renown. More recently, it has seen the emergence of a brother and sister sprinter partnership in Alex and Ashleigh Nelson, who have won some championships in the past few months. It is important that we start now to identify those inspirational athletes, and that we inspire our young people to come forward to be trained and brought through. I would like the Minister to consider this suggestion: across the country, we have many specialist sports colleges; let us rebrand them. Let us make them specialist Olympic colleges. Let us really seize every opportunity provided by the Olympics and the Paralympics to ensure that we inspire our young people to embrace this opportunity. There are other, more wide-ranging facilities in our communities. Many of the schools in my constituency have swimming pools. Over the years, there have been various swimming galas, but they seem to have lost the impetus that they had in the past. Let us take the opportunity to ensure that all our facilities used to the maximum. Let us do an audit to determine which schools have swimming facilities, running tracks and so on, and ensure that they are being used to the utmost and made available to the community. There are also many new facilities such as children’s centres springing up in my constituency. Let us look at those to see whether we can bring them into use for the Olympics and Paralympics. The difficulties involved in ensuring that athletes are able to compete has been mentioned. This might sound corny, but I urge all our communities around the UK to adopt an athlete. Let us identify the athletes in our communities and embrace and support them. Let us help them and work with them to give them every opportunity over the next seven years to get into pole position—I hope that I am not mixing up my sports—so that they can fully participate, up there with the best, and bring home gold for us. Of course, the not-so-young can also get involved. I am sure that hon. Members will be amazed, seeing this athletic form standing before them, to learn that older athletes or potential athletes can get involved, not only in sporting events but in other areas such as volunteering. It is important that it is not only Londoners who feel able to volunteer. We need to ensure that people across the UK can volunteer to take part.