London Olympics Bill

I apologise for not being here at the start of the debate. As I mentioned in an earlier intervention, I was chairing a meeting of the National Strategic Partnership for Volunteering in Sport, which was being held in the House. I just wish we could find a shorter title for the organisation; we are working on it. A massive contribution will be made to the games by volunteering. Today’s debate has quite rightly been dominated by London Members; London will benefit to a great extent from the games. However, the way to engage the entire population across the country is through the distribution of training camps—I shall come back to that later when I talk about Loughborough’s contribution—and through volunteering. At least 70,000 volunteers will be required. It is interesting that, of the five candidate cities, only London submitted a volunteer file with its original application. We have made an enormous contribution in the past through our history of volunteering in sport, but I do not think that has been recognised by some of the other cities. There are stories that there were more British volunteers than Greek ones at the athletics in Athens. People feel that they want to contribute to sport, and many do so through volunteering. I am sure hon. Members know that this is the year of the volunteer, and August is the month of sports volunteering. This morning, we launched the campaign to raise its profile with Tanni Grey-Thompson, a great Paralympian—the Paralympics must be integral to our purpose—who is known not just as a gold medallist across a wide range of sports but as a coach and volunteer. She wants to put back into her sport what she has managed to get out of it over the last few years. That is a demonstration of the commitment from many people across the country. It is estimated that this country has about 6 million unpaid sports volunteers, which is equivalent to 720,000 full-time jobs. Volunteers are paid nothing not because they are worthless but because they are priceless. Their contribution to sport, both at grassroots and elite levels, has made an enormous difference in this country. I hope that Members can squeeze into their diaries for August, which are probably full already, something related to promoting sport in their constituencies and making sure that people register themselves on the website to volunteer in 2012.