London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

The passion of our former hon. Friend, the former Member for Brent, East and former Mayor of London, for newts and many other great issues relating to London is well known. One of the disciplines that has shaped the Olympic project has been confounding what would otherwise have been inevitable. This shows the importance of the Government working with the private sector and other agencies, because it is only the Government who can turn the tide in relation to those inevitabilities. The first example is the importance of bringing benefit not only to London but to the whole of the United Kingdom. A report that I commissioned showed that, had we done nothing to diffuse the benefits around the UK, the disproportionate benefit through displacement from other parts of the country would have been in the region of £4 billion. That would not have been new growth, but displacement to London, with a net additional growth benefit to London. It was because of that that, in the early stages of letting some 1,000 contracts, members of the Olympic Delivery Authority and many of us who are here today toured the country beating the drum to raise awareness of the need to bid for Olympic projects. There was a considerable degree of success. To illustrate that point, the basketball arena—the largest temporary structure ever built—was constructed by a firm in Glasgow; Neath provided the steel for the aquatic centre, which will probably be the iconic symbol of our Olympic park; Bolton provided the steel for the Olympic stadium; Doncaster provided the steel cabling for the roof of the stadium; and the turf came from Scunthorpe. So 1,000 companies around the country, two thirds of them small and medium-sized businesses, won contracts to help to build the Olympic park and the Olympic village, with hundreds more involved in the supply chain. I shall now turn to the second ““inevitability””. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) a passionate advocate of the benefits for the people who live in the five Olympic boroughs, including her own constituents in Newham. There was a great fear that the Olympics would be an oasis that had very little relation to the five boroughs, and that the opportunities provided by the games—not only the construction process and the availability of jobs, but also the legacy—would simply pass the communities of the east end by. We are still to be judged on how far we have succeeded in that regard. The risk of falling behind the expectations of local people in east London must be a continuing spur to us all to ensure that those expectations are realised. By the time the park is complete 30,000 people will have worked in it, 20% of whom will be residents of the six host Olympic boroughs, including Barking and Dagenham. That is well above the original target of 10% to 15%, but we must always believe that we can go further. Local people will have access to more than a third of the apprenticeships, and will be well placed to qualify for the more than 50,000 jobs that will be created in the area once the commercial development is complete. New homes will be built, and Stratford City—the UK’s largest retail centre—will be open in 2011. For those who are sceptical about regeneration, it is worth placing on record the fact that half the original investment in the Westfield centre has now been recovered through the part-sale of the asset by Westfield to a pension fund and other investors. That is regeneration in action. That is what east London needs, but it would not have got it if we had not won the right to host the Olympic games. The Minister talked about engaging the rest of the country. We have seen the enthusiasm for tickets, and it is important that we recruit volunteers from around the country and that the regional benefits of the games are widely enjoyed. We are pleased to see that the Bill’s provisions on advertising and trading during the games are pragmatic and reasonable. It is also sensible to reduce the burdens likely to fall on the police during the period, particularly given the pressures that they will have to cope with as a result of the cuts in their numbers in 2012. The provisions in the Bill are only a small part of the overall proposals on advertising and trading, many of which are being dealt with through secondary legislation and consulted on at the moment. I am confident that the Government are doing what is necessary to ensure that the regulations are appropriate, allowing the majority of businesses to continue to operate as normal and allowing freedom of movement for people coming to the games. We welcome the proposal to raise the maximum penalty for ticket touting at the Olympics from £5,000 to £20,000. The fact that tickets for the opening ceremony in Beijing were on sale at five times their face price provides all the persuasive evidence that we need that this provision is important. We will obviously seek to probe further in Committee into the application of the provisions. The key determinant of whether they will be seen as draconian and disproportionate, or appropriate for facilitating the smooth running of the games, will be the way in which they are applied in practice. When the Bill comes to Committee we might give further consideration to how the non-legislative aspect of the application of these powers can be achieved. We know, of course, about the controversy associated with the Olympic route network, and we have all made it clear that this is a prerequisite of becoming a host city. The choice of whether to have it is not one available to us—a point of which the people of London need constant reminding. Those people also need to be persuaded by the evidence of the reasonable way in which this will be policed. When the Minister winds up the debate, will he consider whether the final approval of the violation charges for abuse of the Olympic route network should lie not with the Secretary of State but with the Mayor of London, which would be more directly consistent with the Mayor’s other powers? The potential fines might be controversial across London and for Londoners, so it is right for the elected Mayor of London to have a say over the level at which the charges are set. In just 456 days, Britain will host the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic games. Already in the Minister’s speech and in the interventions we have heard so far, representations have been made for those in our country who should enjoy special consideration. I think everybody will want to see that special consideration, whether it be to injured members of the armed forces or others, properly respected. I hope the House will also acknowledge the close anniversaries of winning the right to host the Olympic games and the terrorist bombings on London, which followed the day after our great success in Singapore. I hope there will be a place to recognise and honour the victims of 7/7 and those whose lives were changed for ever. In 456 days’ time, 4 billion people will turn on to watch the opening ceremony in the Olympic stadium in east London, and we will have the chance of a lifetime to demonstrate what it is about our great city of which we are so proud, as well as our competence and our capability to deliver for the people of this country and visitors from around the world the largest peacetime logistical operation. I believe that we can have every confidence in looking forward to that. Perhaps the most important way of maintaining that confidence is to maintain a degree of humility at the privilege bestowed on us and at the responsibility we have on behalf of the international Olympic movement. We should remember that, in doing this, we are helping to honour the dreams and ambitions activated by the prospect of the Olympic games for every single citizen across our country.