Examination of Witness (Questions 1-19)
30 MARCH 2004
MS MICHELE
VERROKEN
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. You are very
welcome here today. It is extremely good of you to come to see
us at the outset, or perhaps outbreak, of our inquiry. This is
a private session and if you would prefer to come and sit here
you would be welcome to do so.
Ms Verroken: I do not mind.
Q2 Chairman: If you have an opening statement
to make, we would be very pleased indeed to hear it; otherwise
we can go straight into questioning?
Ms Verroken: Please, I am happy
to go straight into questions.
Chairman: Fine. Mr Bryant?
Q3 Chris Bryant: Thank you. It is good
of you to come along. We have not done many private sessions,
so it is good of to you to be here. As I understand it, one of
the major rows that is going on is about whether UK Sport can
have two roles, both promoting sport and being anti-doping. Where
do you sit in the middle of that ground?
Ms Verroken: I would say that
my views have always been very clear on this. I believe there
should be an independent and accountable system, and I would probably
say that I am in the situation I am in today because my integrity
is not negotiable.
Q4 Chris Bryant: Do you want to explain
a bit more what that means?
Ms Verroken: That there is a direct
conflict between funding or promoting elite sports and being able
to police or enforce standards in sport; and that is probably
true of many aspects of public life too, probably one of the very
reasons why Parliament itself has a committee on standards in
public life: you actually do have to have somebody who can take
a watch-dog role. That does not mean to say the watch-dog cannot
be supportive, but where the priority will be for the hosting
of international events, such as an Olympic Games, or the obtaining
of medals, the achievement of a significant place in the world
rankings, it is very difficult to do that in the current climate
drug-free, it is very difficult to do that without the persuasion
of others to break the rules.
Q5 Chris Bryant: So, correct me if I
am wrong, what you are saying—let's say you are the British
Olympic Association and you are desperately keen to get the Olympics
to come to the United Kingdom—is that it is not in your
interest for their to be any negative stories about British athletes
being in some kind of scandal about taking drugs and, consequently,
you might be less inclined to be rigorous?
Ms Verroken: Certainly you would
want to take care that the rigor you might apply can be managed
carefully.
Q6 Chris Bryant: So if a major sport
has an individual who has or has not got themselves into trouble,
then the sporting organisation might want to keep that name quiet,
for instance?
Ms Verroken: Certainly I think
that would be the first reaction of any sports organisation in
that situation, and we have a number of examples of evidence of
how that has happened over previous Olympic Games: the revelations
of athletes' names, of positive drug tests, either just prior
to the games or actually whilst the athletes are in the village,
seems to cause such huge embarrassment. One can understand the
embarrassment, but at the same time it is simply a matter of professional
misconduct in sport that has to be dealt with. It is not simply
looking at the athlete as the victim of all this but at the surrounding
context of how athletes come to be in that situation; and it may
very well be that it is as a consequence of the culture of the
organisation itself which ultimately is trying to obtain the best
performance out of its athletes.
Q7 Chairman: Before you go on, could
I ask a supplementary question there? I think there is a case
for confidentiality in these circumstances, because we have now
got a press which operates on the assumption of guilt and traduces
people and makes their lives absolute hell, Mr Rusedski being
the obvious example. They voice accusations—and it is not
only done with regard to sportsmen—poor Mr Kelly, who got
the Olivier award only a few weeks ago, is another example. The
press have very good lawyers who can advise them not to say things
that then actually break the law, but really put people through
utter torment and then, at the end of it all, if, as in the case
of Mr Rusedski, it is found that they are exonerated, there is
still the stigma being attached to them. I put that fairly forcefully,
but I do believe there is a strong case.
Ms Verroken: No. I understand
the concern about any apparent breach of confidentiality, but
with anti-doping there is a process to go through, and I think
the main concern possibly of the media, certainly of, I believe,
a number of the athletes as well as members of the general public,
is the fact that the process in some athletes' cases has been
elongated: the information has not come forward in a timely fashion.
Perhaps one example to give you would be the case involving Linford
Christie, which was a case that we believe now the governing body
was aware of in February of the year in question and it was actually
because L'Equipe newspaper in France published the information
in August that it became public. It is, if you like, the responsibility
that seemed to be taken to keep this information out of the public
domain which might have continued through perhaps a major games,
world championships and even through the continual investment
of something like a public or lottery funding or private sponsorship,
which seems to be incongruent with the whole idea of playing fair;
but we have to have a process and we have to stick to it and the
process really ought to be quite timely so that we avoid what
the press believe is going on, which is a cover-up, which I have
to say, several times seems to be the case. Another example I
would give you is the fact that Dwain Chambers' positive case
was brought to our notice at UK Sport by the press. They knew
before we did. The governing body obviously knew but thought it
inappropriate to share that with the public body that was making
the financial investment in that governing body. That is where
I have real concerns about conflict of interest and the need for
more openness but obviously taking into account the need for confidentiality.
Q8 Chris Bryant: Thank you. That was
exactly the line I was going to go down. On another point, it
seems often, and you may have read articles to this effect in
some newspapers, that it is always extremely famous successful
athletes who are caught. Maybe that is just because of the way
we see the press, but that might lead one to the assumption that
if you cheat you end up winning?
Ms Verroken: One would hope that
Paula Radcliffe is the prime example of how that is not the case.
I think it is unfortunate that athletes who have taken drugs have
been successful, but not all athletes. David Jenkins will be an
example of an athlete who, on his own admission, seems to have
performed worse when he was actually taking drugs than he had
ever performed before. So it is not actually an automatic equation—and
certainly I guess it tends to lead people to the flippant remark
that we should start thinking about what we put our England rugby
team on before we slide further back in the rankings—that
is an unfortunate way of looking at the whole culture around sport,
and to persuade school children to accept athletes as role models
who may have to take that route to success. So it is really trying
to get that balance. It is the basis of fair play that, I think,
is very important.
Q9 Chris Bryant: I go to a gym in my
constituency, and most of the lads who go there will quite happily
talk about the fact that they all take steroids; and those are
the few people who are actually engaging in sport at all. It seems
to me that there is an issue right at the very base of British
sport. Is that true?
Ms Verroken: Body-building has
not ever been recognised as a sport, despite its attempts to—
Q10 Chris Bryant: It is certainly not
an art?
Ms Verroken: —get Olympic
recognition, but it does seem to, if you like, bend the rules
somewhat. There are those who would use drugs to obtain the physique
that they want to, which in some respects is the same as those
who might use sport to obtain the physique they want to, whereas
others might choose a route that is probably more like anorexia.
Q11 Chris Bryant: These are not body-builders;
these are people who play rugby: you know all the local rugby
teams?
Ms Verroken: I think that is where
the grey area appears between those who are not part of competitive
sport but are of the view that the way to perform well must be
through this route; and it is a short cut, there is no doubt it
is a short cut, to a considerable amount of strength and stamina.
It would not necessarily give you the skill that you would need
to be a top class rugby player.
Q12 Chris Bryant: Presumably a large
percentage of those who engage in sport are in gyms and swimming
pools and things like that where this is part of the culture?
Ms Verroken: They may very well
be, and that is part of the program we were trying to develop
in terms of declaring sports centres drug-free zones, so that,
particularly where you have local authority sports centres, there
would not be the culture of drugs being obtainable through that
route, especially where there is so much local government investment
in a recreation centre. You would not want to think of it as being
the place where your own children obtained their drugs because
the drugs are being obtained through some form of black market.
Q13 Derek Wyatt: The Committee and Michele
should know, well before I was an MP, I was responsible for the
film on David Jenkins on Channel 4 in 1988, which broke before
the Olympics, which proved that the Unites States' team were on
drugs. This is something that I have had an enduring interest
in for a number of years. If Sue Campbell's appointment is only
temporary in the sense that it is 18 months, I understand, that
she has got her contract for to be head of UK Sport, does that
mean that UK Sport is probably going to be closed, do you think,
and therefore taken in-house inside the Department? If that is
the case—because she has not been given a permanent contract,
unlike Sir Rodney Walker was—where will drugs go if that
scenario were true? Where will the drugs-testing go?
Ms Verroken: You are asking me
to do a bit of forward-gazing here. If that was the case, the
scenario, I would assume could be happening, is that the financial
investment in governing bodies of sport and athletes would be
with some kind of partnership with the British Olympic and Paralympic
Associations, that the policy elements of anti-doping would be
within the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and that the
actual delivery of testing would be in the hands of private bodies;
and I think if you look at the proposed business plan for UK Sport
for the next five years and the PMP report, that is an option.
Q14 Derek Wyatt: I have talked to the
FA recently—I am trying to think—probably 12 weeks
ago now. They are totally opposed to having an external drugs
agency—they want to do all their testing themselves—but
the rugby union is not. The RFU wants an outside body because
it wants their players to be tested without knowing whether they
will be tested and it wants integrity in that way. Who is right
and who is wrong in this argument?
Ms Verroken: I think you would
expect me to say—and I do believe it—that rugby union
is right. The problem of testing in-house, if you like, within
the governing body, goes back to the very report that Colin Moynihan
and Sebastian Coe put together in 1987 when they identified a
number of conflicts of interest in governing bodies of sport actually
delivering testing programs for their athletes. You will find,
amongst the files at UK Sport, the evidence reviewed for the Moynihan/Coe
report e.g. that samples did not reach the laboratories
and that samples were not provided by the athletes who were selected.
Some of that may have come about through very innocent over-worked
volunteers taking those responsibilities on, and some of it may
well have been devious, but trying to actually identify which
was which was obviously extremely difficult.
Q15 Derek Wyatt: On the Rio Ferdinand
case, was it just clumsiness that he did not turn up, given that
he had a clean account, or was it that he had something else that
he did not want anyone else to know about but actually was clean
on the drugs?
Ms Verroken: It is very difficult.
It would be more speculation to discuss why Rio Ferdinand did
not report for his drug-test. The procedures that took place at
Manchester United were slightly different than the procedures
one would expect to see at any sporting event. The drug-testers
should be notifying the athletes directly. For those who were
present at the World Indoor Athletic Championships, as the athletes
came off the track and then out of the arena the sampling officers
were there and notified them in whatever language they needed
to notify them and signed them up there and then. The difference
with Manchester United is that the sampling officers do not get
access to the first team players—that goes through an intermediary—and
the question is whether or not Rio Ferdinand really understood
the seriousness, that he actually was being called for a drug-test,
or whether, because of the camaraderie that may exist in a team
sport, he thought it was just a huge joke, or whether he was actually
aware that he had something to hide and there was collusion between
various parties that said, "It's okay; we will fix it for
you." It is very difficult to say. I do not know. All of
those scenarios could be true.
Q16 Derek Wyatt: Some of us went to the
World Indoor Games in Birmingham and saw how it works. Tell us
how it ought to work then? What would your recommendation be to
this Committee?
Ms Verroken: Certainly. I will
take a team sport, because I think that is a most appropriate
comparison. The team, when they have finished playing, if you
are dealing with in competition testing, should at least be given
the chance to leave the leave the field of play, and usually you
would follow them through the tunnel into the various changing
rooms. Sometimes that does cause some concern with the team managers.
They may like to have the motivating team talk, I will say
generously, or the clarification of what went wrong in the field
of play, and they may not like other people present, particularly
if boots are flying and other things are happening, but it is
one of those situations where we have had to negotiate our way
into the changing rooms to protect the players. Unless they are
famous players, you may not know if they have swapped shirts,
or whatever, so you approach the players as soon as is possible,
advise them that they have been selected for a drug-test and obtain
their signature to confirm that they know that they have been
notified. That is the first part of the process. Once they know
they have been notified, it is still up to them if they want to
refuse to be tested. We cannot force them to provide the sample
we need—and it usually is a urine sample—but mostly
the important process that takes place then is what do you as
an athlete need to do next? Do you need to obtain medical treatment?
Do you need to warm down? What do you need to do? I, as the sampling
officer, need to stay with you and take you to the venue where
we are collecting the sample in order that I can guarantee the
integrity of your sample and the "no notice" that you
have had. When the athlete reaches the doping control station
they are supervised in providing that urine sample. They can provide
a small amount, and that needs to be sealed and more added to
it before the sample then is divided into the A and B sample.
If we are talking about out-of-competition testing either at a
training ground or even at an athlete's home, it is simply approaching
the individual and saying, "You are needed for a drug-test"—just
clarify what it is they may need to do next. We do allow athletes
the chance to—at the World Indoor Championships we had a
very convoluted way of allowing them to get their medals, appear
on television and still get to the doping control station, under
escort all the time.
Q17 Derek Wyatt: I was rather thinking,
should there be an independent agency outside of UK Sport that
does it and does everyone and they are the rules, or should it
be inside UK Sport? I am trying to work out where you think we
should be going as a Committee?
Ms Verroken: I think this lends
itself to the situation where there can be conflicts of interest
either in the selection of athletes or the access that you might
have to athletes; and that is why I would believe it should be
outside of UK Sport, so that you have an open selection of the
athletes that you believe are in your elite pool of athletes without
any opportunity to have a suggestion that we were not sure if
they were going to make the grade in terms of performance, they
could withdraw their grant or, "Look, we are investing a
lot of money in that athlete, we should not be testing them quite
as often as we are."
Q18 Derek Wyatt: Do you think there should
be a drug-free clause in the players' contracts?
Ms Verroken: Definitely.
Q19 Derek Wyatt: Does it happen anywhere
else in the world?
Ms Verroken: It is interesting
that the World Federation of Sporting Goods Industries had tried
to encourage major sponsors to include drug-free clauses in their
sponsorship contracts. So Nike certainly has that contract, Adidas
certainly have that contract, that clause in the contract; and
it is about the investment. The difficulty and the real conflict
is, of course, if that player is an asset to the club, having
that clause may actually suspend an individual, as in the situation
with Rio Ferdinand, presumably, as we hear from the media, on
full pay.
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