London Olympics Bill

As I said earlier, it has been a privilege and pleasure to take the Bill through Parliament. The contributions on Third Reading show what the nation was feeling on 6 July. My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) encapsulated that. Many people stood in Trafalgar square, and some Members were with me in Singapore. I visited my French counterpart, Jean-Francois Lamour, in the hall in Singapore, and I had to squeeze past some 50 or 60 journalists to get to him. Steve Redgrave and David Beckham were involved on our behalf, but we had only three photographers in front of us. I thought, ““The result has been leaked and we obviously haven’t won.”” Jacques Rogge kept the world in suspense by delaying opening the envelope containing the result. I point out by way of an aside that as we speak, a silver letter-opener is being made for him, on which is engraved, ““Please do not keep the world waiting in anticipation again.”” When Jacques Rogge finally opened that envelope, he said, ““London.”” Until that moment, a lot of people who wanted us to win the bid did not quite believe that we could do so. Such enthusiasm added to the atmosphere in Trafalgar square and definitely to that in Singapore, and it has carried all the way through. When people look back in years to come, they will recognise that through this Bill, we have established a foundation for an Olympic games that has never been established before. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and I, along with others, travelled the world to speak to representatives of many of the cities that have hosted the Olympics. We asked one simple question: ““What would you do differently if you hosted the games again?”” They were very generous in giving advice and we have worked on the basis of it. The product is this Bill, which will deliver a structure that will address, for example, the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) about cost overruns. The framework that we have established will be cost-effective, and it is absolutely crucial that in the next 18 months, we get the company up and running, the various structures in place and the contracts laid. We must not get involved in crisis management; we must control the process from start to finish. If we do that, we will host a good games. Such an approach will also enable us to tackle seriously the other elements that make an Olympic games highly successful. One such element is legacy. Other Olympic games have had to resort to crisis management, and we ourselves have done so with certain big projects. We have learned from that. Avoiding the need for crisis management will give us the space in which to develop the games. Legacy, which the Olympic board controls, is a very important issue to which there are many strands: the built environment, the human environment, the sporting infrastructure, and the cultural infrastructure. I hope that after 2012, we will leave behind one of the best sporting infrastructures in the world. Other strands include participation and talent identification. We want the talented athlete scholarship scheme to find talented young people in our secondary schools not by chance but by design, and to maximise their potential for producing world-class performances. Unlike Steve Redgrave and Kelly Holmes, who were discovered by chance, we want such people to be discovered by design. We are instituting that scheme and the mentoring of young students, arranging the curriculum around such activities and taking them through the scheme as one. The Olympic board deals with many such legacy issues, and in turn it is responsible to this House and its organs, such as Select Committees. I am sure that we will deliver in this area. On betting, the IOC has asked us to look at that issue, but we have made it clear that we have no plans to legislate. We are discussing with the governing bodies how we can assist on the question of ticket-touting, particularly in the light of the electronic means by which touting is now carried out, such as via eBay. The momentum generated by the great euphoria of 6 July is still there throughout the country. If we can maintain it by developing cultural activities and grass-root sports projects throughout the UK—in the regions and through the devolved Administrations—we will have a lasting legacy that will be second to none. Many of us take seriously the narrative on which we won the games—which was reconnecting young people with sport through the five rings and the Olympic movement. While the Bill is about the delivery of the games by the UK, I believe that we have a responsibility to the Olympic movement and the world to use the great influence that we have through the Commonwealth, the European Union and many other institutions to achieve that aim. Seb Coe and those working with him hope that come 2012, we will deliver the narrative on which, according to the International Olympic Committee, we won the bid and bring young people back into sport through the Olympic movement.