National Lottery

I am delighted to do so. We must have been speaking to different people at Camelot; my office had a discussion with Camelot this afternoon, in which it told us that the additional increase in money to good causes was clearly predicated on those three things. The concessions are important, but they do not undo the main damage caused by the order. It is extraordinary to fund a £9.3 billion Olympics budget by cutting the budgets for grass-roots sports—the very budgets that could provide the sporting legacy that was the big promise of 2012. Derek Mapp, who resigned as chairman of Sport England, described it as ““a cut too far””. He is, or was, a strong Labour supporter. In 2004, he gave £3,000 to his constituency Labour party, because he presumed that widening participation in sport was a central plank of the Government's 2012 strategy. Like us, he has no doubt read the London plan, part of the London 2012 candidate file, which said that the games would succeed in"““leaving a legacy to be valued by future generations””." In fairness, the Secretary of State used to take a rather different view, saying:"““The Olympics would inevitably deprive other schools of new pitches and extra coaches. Why? Because we won't be able to raise the extra lottery money, and because the costs will overrun.””" It seems that he knew better what his own Government would do than either Derek Mapp or we did—the sad truth is that his predictions have turned out to be spot on.