Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000
MR DEREK
CASEY, MR
TREVOR BROOKING
CBE AND MRS
BRIGID SIMMONDS
220. Are you happy that that is a legal way
in which it would be done; that that is within the terms of the
Lottery Agreement?
(Mr Casey) I think so in contractual terms, when the
National Stadium Limited and the FA are co-partners or co-signatories
to the Lottery Agreement. I think we would have to agree with
WNSL that there is no contractual basis on which that £20
million would be paid back. However, if the Football Association
wants to pay back the £20 million on a voluntary basis, that
is clearly a part of the discussion which we are currently having
with them.
221. Once you got the £20 million back,
you would then distribute it. As a Lottery distributor—and
if, Mrs Simmonds, you want to come in on this, please do—you
are bound by very strict conditions one of which is that you have
to obtain value for money for any grant which you make. If £20
million was returned to you to be passed back to athletics, let
us say, to finance changes at Twickenham, would you feel that
that was value for money, indeed would you be willing to pay that
money over?
(Mrs Simmonds) That consideration would have to be
taken by the Lottery Panel, which is a sub-panel of Sport England.
It would have to satisfy the criteria that we have for all grants
which come before us: it would have to be value for money, the
project would have to be viable, the applicant would have to be
eligible and there would have to be financial need. So providing
all those criteria were satisfied, I cannot sit here as a member
of the Lottery Panel and say that yes, we would definitely give
that money to athletics, but I would consider that we would give
a sympathetic hearing towards athletics getting the money.
222. So there is absolutely no guarantee that
this money would be de facto handed over to UK Athletics
to do what they like with it?
(Mrs Simmonds) There is no guarantee, but I certainly
would think that other members of the Lottery Panel and indeed
the Chairman of Sport England would consider it favourably.
223. Mr Moorcroft in his evidence last week
said that he thought a figure of nearer £50 million would
be necessary to make a successful bid. Where is the extra £30
million in the bank going to come from?
(Mrs Simmonds) I think that is actually a considerable
question. Perhaps I can say as a member of the Lottery Panel who
meet monthly, we have a split between the world-class panel and
the community panel. I sit on the community panel. In our Lottery
strategy—of which I think you have a copy—we looked
at funding £150 million for community-type projects. Because
of the money that is being taken by the New Opportunities Fund
and reduced ticket sales by Camelot, by 2003 the community fund
budget will be reduced to only about £80 million. I think
we have to take a real consideration. To many of you, as constituency
MPs, the funding of community projects is enormously important,
and it also contributes to government policies like social exclusion,
the health of the nation, and sport and education, and the panel
will have to take a view on whether, with a diminishing amount
of money available, we want to put more money into athletics.
224. So there is a very real danger that UK
Athletics is going to be cut out completely, and that a bid for
2005 is going to be impracticable?
(Mrs Simmonds) I think one of the things which you
made clear in your Report last May was that for any Olympic bid
there would need to be substantial government funding. I think
that if there is going to be an Olympic bid and if that was going
to be a conversion of Twickenham for an Olympic bid, then I think
we would certainly be looking towards some government funding
to make that happen.
(Mr Brooking) I think also there is a problem wherever
you look. For instance, at the meeting on 19 October when we were
discussing sightlines of 67,000 to 80,000 from a Wembley point
of view for the Olympics, the question then came up at that time,
to Mr Clegg of the BOA, was Wembley definitely the site? At that
stage he said certainly "Matters of our bid are confidential;
what I can say is Wembley is possibly one of two or three other
sites in the London area". So we were at that stage in October
being asked to make a decision on spending finance, on the fact
that there was not a bid on the table yet, but perhaps that the
Government had not yet decided on the infrastructure situation,
and again that we were not sure whether it was going to be in
the Wembley area, so everyone else would have to face that decision
as well.
225. In repeated Parliamentary Answers over
the last few weeks both the Secretary of State and the Minister
have referred to the fact that athletics has been removed from
Wembley after discussion with, and agreement from, "interested
parties" which is the expression which is constantly used.
I think that as a Committee, we are not aware of any party other
than the BOA who has subscribed to that. Are you aware of any
other parties or advisory body who have recommended that?
(Mr Casey) Not necessarily recommended it. If you
look at UK Athletics, of course, even in December I think David
Moorcroft was saying that Wembley was a very good solution for
the World Championships, not necessarily for the longer-term legacy.
We have to face the situation, though, that UK Athletics have
actually decided not to use Wembley, and of course we are now
looking at alternatives.
226. They have been told they cannot use Wembley.
They have not taken the decision themselves; they have been told
it is just no longer viable.
(Mr Casey) I think that the position of Sport England
is that it is exactly the same as WNSL, that we still believe
the stadium is capable of staging athletics events.
227. I turn to my last question which was my
last question to Wembley. As far as you are concerned, the best
solution would be to go back to 29 July and pretend that nothing
had happened subsequently?
(Mr Casey) I am not sure whether you can erase history
such as that. I think that that is an issue essentially for athletics
first and foremost, because what we have done and always do with
Lottery funding grants is to make sure that we are meeting expressed
demand.
228. But if athletics went back to the Secretary
of State and said, "We would like to have another go at Wembley",
would you support them?
(Mr Casey) I think we would have to see what athletics
actually said to the Secretary of State, because there clearly
are issues relating to timing, there are issues relating to the
Funding Agreement, and you would have to look at this as an overall
package.
Mr Fearn
229. Can I ask Mr Brooking, in retrospect do
you still consider the concept of a national stadium as a good
one?
(Mr Brooking) Yes. You have seen our submission. I
do not want to go back too far. When we first started up, the
national stadium was for three sports. Of course, at that particular
time we were looking at event usage, and for the three sports
it was not as it is now. I think athletics envisaged that there
might be more involvement, whereas gradually in the next two or
three years we actually found out that athletics were telling
us that, "To be honest, this stadium will be too big for
our normal events, grand prix or national ones," and that
they were probably only going to be using it for two events—although
the European Cup was being mentioned, but subsequently they even
said it possibly would be too big for that—if they were
putting together a bid for the World Athletic Championships and
also if there was another bid for the Olympics as well. On that
basis, what we have tried to do as Sport England, with the membership
and the Lottery Panel, which has a whole cross-section of individuals
including the GB Athletics captain, Verona Elder, Steve Cram,
we have Tessa Sanderson, we all like athletics as well—the
main issue here was always to protect athletics, because there
is not a separate stadium that can be built for a bigger major
event of a standard in athletics; you have to have this sustainably.
The correspondence from the IOC and IAAF emphasised this. So what
we tried to do is to take a consistent viewpoint, get parties
around, with speakers from the sports on board. I think it is
fair to say that there was that consensus, we had our agreement
when we got to the stage of the launch at the end of July, where
we did feel there was the spirit of conciliation from all sports,
and then possibly, as has been said, later on in the year that
began to crumble.
230. Have Sport England ring-fenced any money
at all for an athletics stadium?
(Mr Casey) We are not allowed to ring-fence money
as such, but I think that as Mrs Simmonds said, if a strategy
came forward for an alternative venue which met all the other
elements within the Lottery directions which we have to abide
by, then clearly the Council, with the Lottery Panel, may be sympathetic
if the £20 million comes back. I think that one of the issues
that we have now repeated to UK Athletics is that it is very important
that they have an overall strategy for their own events. There
is a facility strategy which we have helped to produce and which
we are proceeding with—indeed, another issue which came
up at the Select Committee in the spring. However, one of the
points that athletics has really got to bed down is that there
are four elements within the provision for athletics. One is a
stadium big enough to hold the World Championships, and that is
round about 50,000, 55,000, 60,000, which we obviously looked
for at Wembley. The second issue is that athletics ideally like
a stadium of about 20,000 which would be capable of staging events
like the European Cup which is in Gateshead this year and which
will attract roughly 16,000 to 20,000 people, so that they want
a stadium of that size. Thirdly, they obviously want top-level
training facilities, indoor facilities in particular, and we are
looking at that in terms of the work that we do with the UK Sports
Institute. Fourthly, that even if there were a stadium of 20,000,
the athletics philosophy and policy is that they would still like
to take major events such as the World Cup and European Cup around
the country to places like Gateshead, Sheffield and Birmingham.
So athletics in a sense has to bed down those sometimes four competing
elements of the venues for athletics, and we are obviously working
with athletics now to see how any or all of those could be satisfactorily
met.
231. I heard Mr Brooking say earlier on that
there are three venues in London. I am from the North. What is
the matter with Manchester? We have a stadium not yet started,
regrettably, but it will be. What is wrong with Manchester?
(Mr Casey) Perhaps I can take this, Mr Fearn, because
I actually met Manchester with UK Athletics last Friday to look
at this very issue. If you recall the stadium for the Commonwealth
Games in Manchester, in athletics mode for the 2002 Commonwealth
Games it is going to have a capacity of about 38,000. As Mr Stubbs
said earlier, after that it will be converted into a football
stadium, with Manchester City Football Club as an anchor tenant,
with a capacity of about 48,000. For the World Championships we
would, in a sense, have to redesign the stadium now to go to the
larger capacity; it would give an athletics track in there which
may still cause problems for football, and again in the longer
term it would be taken away, with no legacy. One important concern
at the moment is that if you had to redesign the stadium in Manchester,
their architects tell us that it would take something like three
months, and I think they would be really tight against the Commonwealth
Games in Manchester as it is at the moment. If there was a redesign
of three months, we are told by the architects that the stadium
would open just one month before the Commonwealth Games. I think
that all of us feel that that is too tight a timescale to make
certain that there is a very successful Commonwealth Games in
Manchester in 2002.
232. Would you not have to alter Twickenham?
(Mr Casey) Again we have been looking at Twickenham,
again with athletics and the RFU, and that work has not yet been
concluded. I think it is fair to say that there are two issues
at Twickenham. One is the stadium and the second is the infrastructure
and the transport in the Twickenham area. It may well be the latter
which is the more problematic, rather than the former. In a sense,
that is why Wembley was attractive for us, because a lot of our
investment of £103 million to buy the site was effectively
buying the infrastructure around Wembley, which had been built
over the last 60 or 70 years, as well as the investment which
will provide tremendous regeneration opportunities in what is
a very deprived area of London and indeed of England.
233. In spite of all your discussions, there
really is only one venue, and that is Wembley?
(Mr Casey) We have been charged and asked by the Secretary
of State to continue to look at some alternative venues in London
and elsewhere, and that work is proceeding at the moment.
Derek Wyatt
234. In 1996, when this whole saga started,
was there not a single brain anywhere that was thinking we might
be an Olympic bidder, having tried three times in the previous
20 years?
(Mr Casey) I think I would go back one year before
that, Mr Wyatt, to round about 1995 when the issue of the national
stadium came up. I think that at that time the British Olympic
Association, having had unsuccessful bids in Birmingham and Manchester,
was taking stock about what should be done, and a couple of statements
by the Association were saying round about that time that they
had not yet decided either to bid or indeed where to bid. Effectively,
it was not until the spring or summer of 1998 that the Olympic
Association decided it would make a bid if it was viable, and
secondly it would be London. As soon as that happened, of course,
we began to marry up the fact that Wembley was the preferred site,
with the possibility of a new Olympic bid. It was at that time
that the instruction went to the architects to start thinking
about how do you actually increase this to 80,000 if there is
a bid. I believe that we successfully did that; we successfully
found a way in which if there is an Olympic bid, if it is London,
and if it is Wembley, then the stadium can be converted to a very
satisfactory facility for the Olympics.
235. As a follow-up to that, I am a simple man
too, so can I ask you this? Who makes sports strategy in this
country? Is it the Minister for Sport, the Secretary of State,
the Chief Executive of Sport England, the Chairman of the UK Sports
Council? Who makes strategy?
(Mr Casey) I think there are various strategies which
need to be in place. Clearly, there needs to be an overall strategy
for sport in the country, which I would suggest is for Government,
and indeed we know that is forthcoming from the DCMS's submission.
I think there is a second strategy which, for example, is for
the Olympics, where the initial development of that strategy should
be led by the British Olympic Association in concert with a range
of other organisations. Thirdly, I think individual sports should
have a strategy for their individual facilities. So I think there
are a number of almost interlocking strategies which need to be
put in place, which cover the whole range of sports.
236. Do you find it surprising, having lost
three Olympic bids, that we still have not got that strategy?
(Mr Casey) I share Mr Stubbs' view that it is perhaps
surprising that we are still waiting some several years later
for an overall strategy for the Olympics. I think it is important,
because it is not just decisions on Wembley that have to be taken
in that context, but all sorts of decisions about the infrastructure
throughout London.
237. Can we just come back to the strategy argument,
given that we have been to Australia and we have been to Singapore
as a Committee. We saw how much had happened in Kuala Lumpur which
was definitely a government bid. We saw how much was going in
there, with a Minister for the Olympics. It is not as though these
are new things we are looking at, so why have not you, or why
has not UK Sports Council, recommended these things? It is not
a new strategy.
(Mrs Simmonds) I think, Mr Wyatt, that you recommended
in your Report that there should be a Minister for Events, and
in fact in Manchester Mr Ian McCartney has been very involved
as a Minister for Events. I think it is enormously helpful that
he sits in the Cabinet Office and therefore has some responsibility
for co-ordinating government policy in that area. We very much
support your recommendation that there is a Minister for Events
if we are going to bid for the Olympics, and in fact I think it
would be essential.
238. If I can come back to the BOA, they wrote
to you on 5 March 1998, in evidence we have, concerning the desired
Olympic capacity of 75,000 to 80,000, and they have yet to have
a reply. Why is that?
(Mr Casey) I did obviously notice the comments of
the BOA on this issue of consultation. I found it somewhat surprising,
because clearly over that period there was a tremendous amount
of contact with the British Olympic Association by letter, by
telephone, by briefings, by direct contact. It was interesting
to note that at the Select Committee in March of last year the
BOA did say that they were working extremely closely with Sport
England, and I think that the extent of consultation was echoed
there and echoed again in terms of the July statement by the BOA
about Wembley.
239. But still they complain that they were
not involved directly in the formulation of the design brief in
mid-1998. We heard before that actually nothing seemed to happen
between the two.
(Mr Brooking) There was not a great design brief between
the middle part of 1998 and early 1999, because of course we had
to acquire the site, and until we acquired the site you did not
want to have a lot of costs on design. So once we acquired the
site in March 1999, then the design issues went on. In fact, the
then Minister had two meetings with the BOA, on 13 May, I believe,
and 5 July. It was on 5 July, the latter one, that actually the
Minister went in great detail through how you were going to get
to the designs on the Olympic mode. I think that again last week
it was suggested that three days before the actual launch was
the first time they had seen the actual design. To be fair to
the then Minister, on 5 July he had gone through with the BOA
at that meeting how that was going to be achieved.
Mr Maxton: I have the greatest admiration
for Mr Banks, but he is neither a Member of the Committee, nor
is he a witness on this particular occasion. Continue, Mr Wyatt.
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