Examination of Witness (Questions 40 -
62)
THURSDAY 15 JUNE 2000
MS JENNIE
PAGE CBE
40. Do you still think having a central point
or central idea for celebrating the Millennium was right? Do you
think it would have been better to have, as was suggested at the
time, a whole series of major events but at different points around
the nation of the United Kingdom which would have allowed different
parts of the nation to celebrate it in their way rather than in
one central point in London?
(Ms Page) The first point to make about that is that
the Dome does not stand on its own. It is part of the entire Millennium
Commission portfolio and there are thousands of things happening
all over the country anyway. The second is that the national programme
itself, which is part of the NMEC responsibility, has also produced
events and activities and participation all the way round the
country. Standing back from that, I always had plan B at the Millennium
Commission which was discussed by the Commission, which was the
many centres or the Festival of Cities. There was a lot of debate
by the Commission as to whether that was the right course to go.
It is really for the Millennium Commission witnesses to answer
in detail on that, but my recollection is that two things swayed
the commissioners. They were very clear in their own minds. It
was their decision, not the executive's. One was that a focal
point of pulling it all together, the Crown jewels as it were,
was emotionally to be supported, and the other was that it would
offer a better opportunity to leave a major legacy than would
a series of, say, festivals around the cities.
41. Would you still agree that the Dome at Greenwich
was the best place to do this and the best way of doing it?
(Ms Page) It was the one that was chosen. There were
many other alternatives. When the Commission were considering
in January and February 1996 where to go there was no doubt at
all that the NEC site at Birmingham offered a much easier option.
It was a clean site. It had transport links, although they were
potentially likely to be badly affected by an exhibition there.
It had an operating company already in place. People are used
to going to the NEC. There were many advantages to the NEC site.
But the Commission came to the conclusion that the legacy potential
of going to Greenwich, plus the iconic role of Greenwich in the
measurement of time—this was after all celebrating a moment
in time—led to a decision to go to Greenwich rather than
Birmingham.
Chairman
42. With all the virtues of Birmingham though,
is it not a fact that the M6/M5 problems can make getting to Birmingham
absolutely gruesome?
(Ms Page) Completely gruesome. There was a fear on
our traffic projections that the M42 would become completely stationary
at various points in the summer. Almost by definition a site which
is large enough to take 10 million visitors on a temporary basis
is not going to be easy to find with good access to that capacity.
Mr Maxton
43. As someone who has Hampden Park in his constituency
I know that very well indeed. Can I turn to the sale of tickets
and visitors? As you know, some of my questioning throughout the
period has been on what has now become apparent, a failure to
sell the Dome, certainly in my view, outside the southern counties
of England. In Scotland it is resented. It is seen as London based.
It is seen as something that has got nothing to do with them.
As far as I am aware the sale of tickets in Scotland has been
minimal.
(Ms Page) I have no knowledge of that.
44. In the early period when you were in charge?
You must have some idea or did you not do any breakdown of sales?
(Ms Page) Indeed. In January we were starting to track
on a monthly basis while we were settling in the systems the source
of tickets. Indeed, there are people coming from around the country.
Those are questions that you must ask the current management.
45. Two things come to mind though on the sale
of tickets. One is that from the beginning you insisted that people
would have to have a ticket basically before they left central
London to go to the Dome. Do you still think that was the right
decision or would it have been better to give people the option
simply to turn up, pay at the gate and go in?
(Ms Page) We were driven in large part by the concerns
of the Government, the Department of Transport and the concerns
of the local authority, who were significantly worried about whether
or not people would simply be flooding down there without tickets
and causing problems, not within the Dome but outside the Dome
gates. Quite a lot of the decisions which the company took, particularly
in relation to transport, were in response to pressures from other
organisations that were properly exercising their own concerns
and of course who, as long life bodies, had strong voices which
were listened to.
46. I can understand that. Do you still think
it was the right decision?
(Ms Page) It was quite clearly not necessary for the
numbers that were going because it is possible to have people
buying tickets at the gate, and indeed people do turn up and tickets
are sold. At least they already were in January. I do not know
what happens now.
47. Do you think that the problems, first of
all in building the Jubilee Line, and what, to be honest, were
obvious (to me anyway) throughout the investigations that we did,
of not particularly good relations—and that is probably
putting it kindly—between yourselves and the London Underground
operation affected the way in which the Dome has operated?
(Ms Page) I think at a working level the relationships
on site, and certainly by the time I left, were perfectly fine.
What was clear was that there was a great deal of pressure which
the company felt and I think the Government felt at the exposure
to the potential failure of the Jubilee Line to open in time for
the Dome. It was already many months late. It was an additional
risk piled on top of the hundreds of risks that the project already
had and a great deal of attention was focused on it. It could
well have been that a lot of the time and attention that was spent
on making sure that the commitment to get the Tube there on time
could have been spent on other things.
48. I travel regularly in to Paddington on the
Paddington Express from Heathrow. It is one of the major gateways
into London. It is also one of the major gateways to the Bakerloo
Line and the Jubilee Line down to the Dome. It is difficult to
see when you arrive at Paddington any great advertising for the
Dome. You do not walk through Paddington and think, "Oh,
this is where I go to the Dome. How do I get to the Dome?".
Is that a failure on your part or on the part of the company or
a failure on the part of the Underground or British Rail, or whoever
runs Paddington?
(Ms Page) The Committee will remember many discussions
about ways in which we wanted even the Underground station to
be called "The Dome" and to make sure that everybody
knew where it was and what it was about. While we did get a certain
amount of buy-in from other public bodies like the Underground
to the Dome, and none of these bodies has the additional resources
any more than the Dome did, there were not additional resources
to give it that sort of blanket coverage and marketing around
the gateways of London that, for example, most Expos get. It would
probably have helped if it was more wholeheartedly adopted as
the sole major symbol that everyone was proud of, but that is
not the way that things work in London, and of course there are
many other competing attractions in London which would have made
it unfair for people to devote all of their attention to the Dome
rather than to other attractions such as the Eye and Tate Modern
and the Bridge and all the others.
49. Somebody said to me who visited the Dome
that if she was in London the Dome was worth going to but it was
not worth coming to London to go to the Dome. Would that be a
fair description?
(Ms Page) I cannot agree with that because a lot of
people have said quite the opposite. There are many people from
outside London who have spoken to me or written to me and who
have told me that they have thoroughly enjoyed it and they will
remember it for the rest of their lives. I think it is a matter
of subjective opinion and it always will be.
Mrs Golding
50. I too must declare an interest for a most
wonderful night. I enjoyed every minute and I will remember it
always. It is a great pity, I must say to you, that you do not
feel you can visit the Dome because you could see the smiles and
enjoyment and the absolute freedom that children have when they
go in there. It is something to treasure and you would think that
all your effort and all the time that you put in, all the heartache
that you had, was worth every one of those smiles. I do ask you
somehow to get the courage to go back and just have a look. Everybody
concentrates on the Dome. We are a miserable nation. We have forgotten
how to enjoy ourselves. I think that if people understood what
else in developing the Dome had happened in that area they might
have a different opinion: the opening up of the tourism, the improvement
to the environment, what is going to happen on the Royal Arsenal
site, the improvement on the Greenwich site, the employment that
was generated in the area, the employment that was generated in
other parts of the country where much of the interior of the Dome
was made. People do not realise that at all. The level of high
unemployment there that you did so much to turn round and give
employment to those people. Do you think if people really understood
what the Dome meant, what it meant to the people of Greenwich
and the people of that area of London, they would perhaps change
their opinion?
(Ms Page) I think it would be very helpful if people
did get some feeling for all of those aspects of the Dome. The
national programme and the educational programme in particular
seemed to me to have done wonderful work. The difference it has
made to pushing forward development in Greenwich is fantastic.
I think that in due course people will understand just how great
is the change that has been made by the Dome and it is just very
sad that it is not felt now. I have not gone to the Dome because
I do not think it is fair on other people, not because I do not
have the courage.
Mrs Golding: Go in disguise!
Mr Keen
51. How many more visitors do you think we would
have got to the Dome if there had been no antagonism in the media
towards the Dome? Would we have reached the 12 million if everybody
had been in favour of it? We may be asking too much of course.
What do we want the press to do? We want them to be critical if
they think it is deserved, but if they had been completely supportive
would we have reached the 12 million, do you think?
(Ms Page) The company throughout the period that I
was there, and I am sure it still does now, does do surveys of
the propensity to visit, of how many people say they are going
to come to the Dome. Even in November/December 1999 there were
indications that well in excess of 12 million people intended
to visit the Dome. You always discount from that. There were figures
of up to 17 million quoted at one point. You discount from what
people say they will do because in the event they do not or they
try and do it so late in the year that they cannot get in. However,
it would be wrong for me to say that I have got any clever way
of saying that the site was cost X million visitors by bad publicity.
I do not think you can make those assumptions. It may well be
indeed that it will not be until we have got to the end of the
year that we will really know just how much influence the press
has had, or how much influence the "no cars" policy
has had. I do not think it is possible to say at this stage.
52. It did not do any good for the Dome, did
it?
(Ms Page) No.
53. We have already touched on the fact that
you were aware that if politicians were involved then it would
be more likely to get a criticism from the media and I think everybody
would understand that. We had Tony Banks christen Peter Mandelson
"the Dome Minister" at one stage. Did that really help
point out politicians? We are always open to criticism of course.
Did you really have any strong arguments or discussions with people
to try and keep Ministers out of it altogether? Obviously the
Government has a tremendous responsibility because three-quarters
of a billion pounds was put into it so they had to be involved,
but did you try to get them to keep right out of it altogether?
(Ms Page) I made several personal attempts to persuade
Ministers that standing back from the Dome would be good for them
as well as good for the Dome.
54. Can I come to one more thing, Chairman,
before I finish. I regard one part of the Dome as an unqualified
success, that is getting the infrastructure and the construction,
the furniture, everything in by the end of December. You should
be very proud of the role you played in that. That was a complete
success. Would it not have been better to have two complete teams,
completely separate not overseen by one person but two completely
separate teams, one getting content ready, entertainment and everything
else and the structure and furnishings and infrastructure done
by a completely separate team? Would that not have been a better
way to handle it?
(Ms Page) There were separate teams, of course. There
were different departments inside the company. I think the crucial
thing, which perhaps gets lost sight of, is that the Dome works,
and the Dome does work. It had teething troubles but it is quite
clear that the management has dealt with those teething troubles.
It works as well as it does because it was very carefully designed
to work with large visitor numbers and a lot of attention was
paid to detail and to how things were structured and where they
went in order to make sure that in the operational year it was
going to be as easy and as economical as one could make it to
run. It is a very large and complex site and almost inevitably—because
everything impacts on everything else, and visitor times in one
Zone knock on to a neighbouring Zone, what you do with one set
of technology affects what you can do somewhere else—you
had to have a very intensive management effort at the top to stop
it simply being an exhibition hall with a lot of separate exhibits
in it which were alien one from the other. I think there is no
doubt at all that by the time we opened the management team was
exhausted. They had had far, far too many problems presented to
them, and problems which continued right up to the last moment.
The thing that we were critically short of was enough fresh management
expertise to keep us going on to the next stage just at that critical
moment.
Chairman: I am going to call Mr Faber
again, partly because of the fact that since he joined the Committee
part way through this project he has continually expressed scepticism
about it, and therefore I think he has the right to ask some more
questions but in the context of that I would say two things. First
of all, I hope you will all understand that for one individual
to sit here and answer questions on her own for more than an hour
is a good deal of pressure, and I do not think we ought to prolong
that, despite the clarity of the answers that Jennie Page has
given. Secondly, in saying that Mr Faber has made absolutely clear,
including at the press conference, his scepticism about this project,
it is within the context, and one ought not to resile from that
at this stage, of the general support that this Committee has
given to this project ever since its first report in December
1997. The kind of questions that Mr Maxton has been putting today
are the kind of questions that he put right from the start. He
has been utterly consistent.
Mr Maxton: Boringly so.
Chairman: Indeed, I ought to place on
record it was Mr Maxton who first proposed our first inquiry into
the Dome. Now I have said all that because I think it is right
to place all that on the record. I now ask Mr Faber to continue
with his questions.
Mr Faber
55. I am very grateful, Chairman, and I will
try to be concise. Just returning to where I was when I left off
earlier on the issue of content. When designers and contractors
were bidding for the various Zones, was there any obligation on
them at the time to enter into any kind of undertaking, as you
do when you enter a competition on a television chat show, that
they were not in any way associated with anyone who worked for
NMEC, either related to or associated with?
(Ms Page) Mr Faber, you are testing my recollection
of the small print of an invitation to tender which was issued
in 1995. Without access to it, I cannot answer it. I would be
surprised if we put out an invitation to tender which did not
have all the normal terms and conditions associated with it.
56. On the day that you left, your last day
at work as you referred to earlier, can you recollect what the
total amount of unpaid bills was at the time?
(Ms Page) No, I cannot recollect that and I am not
sure in any event that I would know it because, of course, immediately
after 31 January we were in the process not only of dealing with
final accounts from the construction but also of all the associated
accounts associated with the 31 December event itself. It was
a big pile of working going on.
57. How bad were the cash flows made by the
failure of sponsors to pay?
(Ms Page) The failure of sponsors to pay against the
time when we expected them to pay quite clearly meant that we
were running thin on income when we needed it most, particularly
in the last quarter.
58. The current board of NMEC, again in their
presentation to the Millennium Commission when they asked for
the most recent tranche of money, estimated that it would cost
at least £200 million to close the Dome down on that day.
Do you think that is an accurate estimate?
(Ms Page) I have not got at all an idea. I did not
at any one point during my tenure, subsequent to the 1997 Government
agreement to go ahead, have to work out what instant closure would
cost. Of course the first six or seven months we ran on the basis
that we might have to close at any one time in a fortnight, and
we knew the figures then but I do not know now.
59. Can I just ask you very quickly also about
a German company, Koch Hightex, who were originally contracted
to make the roof. As I understand it their contract was cancelled,
they subsequently went into liquidation and the administrators
then sued NMEC. Is it your understanding that case has now been
settled?
(Ms Page) I have no knowledge of that. I know something
has happened since I left.
60. What was the position when you left?
(Ms Page) When I left we were waiting for another
legal event which had not happened. I do not have the details.
61. My understanding is that NMEC had lost the
case on appeal and that they are due to go back for a secondary
claim you cannot confirm?
(Ms Page) I cannot confirm that. You will have to
ask NMEC.
Chairman
62. Thank you very much, David. Thank you very
much. I said at the beginning that we welcomed your presence here
and I quoted certain words that I said about you at the beginning,
I do not resile from those words. I believe that where you next
go you will be an asset to whatever project you are involved in.
Thank you very much.
(Ms Page) Chairman, thank you very much indeed.
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