Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-299)
RT HON
RICHARD CABORN
MP AND MR
PAUL OLDFIELD
7 DECEMBER 2005
Q280 Danny Alexander: The question
of the cost of transport is tremendously important. For people
coming from the Highlands and the Western Isles the costs of transport
are enormously high. I appreciate this is not perhaps something
you have come to in this level of detail in your discussions but,
despite the fact that there are millions of tickets available
at less than £20, the total cost of someone going from Inverness
to the Olympics to enjoy their £10 seat at the Olympics is
still going to be much higher than it is for someone coming from
Streatham.
Mr Caborn: It will be difficult
though for the guy in Penzance to get to Hampden Park to watch
the Great Britain team play Brazil.
Q281 Danny Alexander: That is true.
As the vast majority of events are taking place in London, I think
it is a point that is very important. If you are trying to subsidise
train tickets, for example, from Inverness to London, say, that
is obviously a cross-border issue so there is maybe a Scottish
remit or a UK remit and we want to ensure that those things do
not fall through the cracks, not least because, for example, with
the rail franchises now, some of these are accountable at a UK
level and some at a Scottish level. There is a real danger that
things like that could slip through the cracks if there is not
a very joined up structure to look at them.
Mr Caborn: The numbers we are
talking about, relatively speaking, are small—the amount
of people who travel up and down, for example, the east coast
main line. It would be great if GNER were to give free transport.
It would be a fantastic contribution by the private sector to
the Olympic Games.
Q282 Mr MacNeil: Are the government
in any way seriously considering a system of transportation for
people from maybe Penzance to London or from Inverness?
Mr Caborn: Not to the best of
my knowledge. I understand it has been raised with my colleague,
Alistair Darling, but that sort of transport issue has not been
discussed inside the committees that are involved in the Olympics.
Q283 Mr MacNeil: Will the government
assist?
Mr Caborn: We will have to consult
my colleagues in transport on it. We have not given consideration
to it yet. I can assure you we have not even set the companies
up. We have just been taking the chairman and chief executives
on from the development agency and that has concentrated our minds,
getting cables underground in the east end of London, not how
we can get young people from the north east of Scotland down to
London. It is early days. It can be raised through committees
like this and that is exactly what these select committees are
all about. We will respond in the normal way we do to any select
committee.
Q284 Mr MacNeil: The Olympic Delivery
Authority will be accountable for all public money raised by the
sale of lottery tickets spent on getting venues and infrastructure
ready on time and on budget. Can you assure the Committee that
the money will be additional to any money which would be spent
anyway by the government?
Mr Caborn: That will be given
a clear budget when it is set up. It is not set up at the moment.
That will be defined by the Olympic Board. As you probably know,
that went through the House of Commons last night and for the
operation of that we are probably looking at the first quarter
of next year. I am not quite sure what your question was on the
budget.
Q285 Mr MacNeil: Will the budget
be extra to the money already committed?
Mr Caborn: When we submitted our
candidate file to the IOC, in that was our budget. It is absolutely
our intention to keep that budget. When there were the first signs
of any increases in costs, as we saw in the aquatic centre, my
Secretary of State moved very swiftly indeed and said that they
had to get back within budget. We believe we are putting some
disciplines in place that will keep what we believe is a realistic
budget on track and therefore we should be able to deliver. You
can never guarantee it. The fact that you cannot guarantee it
is why we have the MOU[4]
between the Mayor's office and government but we will find an
arrangement if there is an overrun for any of the Olympic budget.
Q286 Mr McGovern: Danny mentioned transport
between the Western Isles and London. You mentioned Hampden Park.
That is a venue for football. The issue of transport within Scotland
from, for example, Inverness to Glasgow to attend football matches:
would you envisage that being subsidised or is that an issue for
the Scottish Executive?
Mr Caborn: That would not be from
our resources. That would be a decision of the Scottish Executive.
The only thing we have powers to do is, inside the Olympic Bill,
it covers all the facilities of the Olympics, whether in Scotland
or Wales or wherever. The Bill last night was covering all those
areas on issues like the stadia and the logistics of transportation.
My view is it will not affect Hampden Park that much because it
is a well run stadium and it has all the transport links.
Q287 Mr Walker: Going back to people
coming to the Games and being part of them who otherwise would
not be, 65,000 to 70,000 volunteers—a lot of people have
already put their name forward. Are you going to implement measures
to ensure that there is a broad spectrum of volunteers from across
the UK who are assisting and who will get accommodation, because
I think that would be one way of ensuring people who could not
afford to accommodate themselves down there get a chance to go
through this voluntary network.
Mr Caborn: On the volunteer side,
that will be the responsibility of LOCOG. They have not decided
on a chief executive yet. I do not know whether we will be announcing
that in the near future or before Christmas. We have just announced
the chairman and chief executive of the ODA. The chairman is Seb
Coe and the deputy chair is Keith Mills who was chief executive
of 2012. Once LOCOG is up and running, these issues that you raise
will become much clearer.
Q288 Mr Walker: That is something
on the select committee we should keep on top of.
Mr Caborn: If it goes as one of
your recommendations and an area that you want some answers on,
we would do that. Whether we can answer in the timescale that
you want us to for a select committee—we might have to defer
that until LOCOG is up and running and then we can get the information
fed back. This is not going to be the last hearing of the select
committee. I assume there will be an ongoing dialogue and we will
make sure that you are informed, hopefully in writing rather than
me having to come here, lovely as it is to come here.
Q289 Mr Davidson: I am also on the
Public Accounts Committee so I am sure we will see you there about
the Olympics in due course. On the question of football, can you
bring us up to date with your understanding of the latest position
about the SFA's refusal to let Scots participate?
Mr Caborn: I am disappointed that
the Scottish FA took the decision they did but they have every
right to do that. I can understand their concerns but the president
of FIFA gave the clear assurance that if they played as a GB for
the Olympics that would not detract away from their ability to
enter competitions either at world or other levels. The door is
open and will continue to be open. I hope that they will reconsider
that. It will be a great tribute to GB if we have the best team
that we could select from GB. I have no doubt there will be some
Scottish players in the team.
Q290 Mr Davidson: What is your understanding
as to whether or not the SFA are within their legal rights in
placing a ban on individual players?
Mr Caborn: As I understand it,
the answer to that is yes. That is my understanding. That is the
advice I have been given. What would happen if a player said,
"I am going to play anyway and I am going to make myself
available for selection"? It is always this issue you have
when governments move in on an organisation to ban people. We
saw that probably most starkly in the Moscow Olympics. What do
you do? What is the penalty? Do you say, "You will never
play football again for a Scottish team"? I do not know what
the ultimate sanction would be or whether they would carry that
out.
Q291 Mr Davidson: I am not sure they
have the power to apply the ultimate sanction in the sense of
topping people. Is there any discussion between yourselves and
the SFA about this or have you just left them to it?
Mr Caborn: We have made our position
known at the Sports Cabinet meeting in Cardiff. I am making it
known now to you as a select committee. In terms of intervention
at a political level from the UK, the answer to that is no. It
is a Scottish issue and it is a matter for my political opposite
number in Scotland.
Q292 Mr Davidson: Do you think the
SFA's refusal to allow Scots to participate in the football tournament,
except under their own terms, is helpful to Scotland's case for
recruiting, training camps and other establishments, getting subcontracts
and everything else for Scotland?
Mr Caborn: I would not have thought
it would detract really in that sense. It would be more negative
than positive. How negative? I think it would be very marginal.
Q293 Mr MacNeil: One of the great
things about the Olympics is the coming together of nations. Could
it be a position you might adopt? Incidentally, there will be
a GB and a UK team but would it not be something that might be
worthwhile lobbying the IOC about, trying to get four teams, Northern
Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland to be competing and make
the competition more healthy as a result?
Mr Caborn: No. The ultimate responsibility
for that is the IOC. The franchise for the five rings here is
Team GB.
Q294 Mr MacNeil: Team GB would mean
Northern Ireland?
Mr Caborn: Yes. That is Great
Britain. The franchises for that are given by the IOC. It is not
a government decision. That is a similar position that we had
with FIFA and the football but we have been able to say to FIFA
that this would not detract away from them playing in the various
competitions that FIFA run as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,
if they play in the GB team. In terms of the franchise for the
Olympics, it is GB.
Q295 Mr MacNeil: As Olympic hosts
we are in a special position. Do you not think you could have
the opportunity to lobby the IOC and for the London Olympics to
go for the approach of having more teams and more competition?
Mr Caborn: No. Between the four
nations there is plenty of competition. The fact that we are trying
to get on the medals table would detract away from that, in my
view, because some of the quality teams we have are a mixture
of the devolveds and the regions of this country. We have a very
strong team. We have teams with Scots, English and Welsh. If you
started splitting them, you would get fewer medals rather than
more. If the medals table is a measure of success, your suggestion
would put us down the medals table, not up it.
Q296 Mr MacNeil: When the Soviet
Union became 50 nations as opposed to one, the aggregate went
up the medals table. If you had maybe four teams you might go
up the medals table.
Mr Caborn: It would be a somewhat
different analogy to draw between coming out of Communism and
creating teams coming out of devolved administrations in the United
Kingdom. I would not accept the rationale for that argument, if
I may say so.
Q297 Mr Walker: What does Northern
Ireland compete under? Do they compete under an Irish flag or
would they compete under the GB team?
Mr Caborn: Team GB.
Q298 Mr MacNeil: Is the team misnamed?
Mr Oldfield: The official term
is Team GB and we have some which say "and Northern Ireland"
but Northern Ireland athletes compete as part of Team GB.
Q299 Chairman: You will have heard
about the C-ScOT campaign for a separate Scottish Olympic team.
What is HM government's view on the matter?
Mr Caborn: I think it is flying
in the wind. It is something we do not accept. If you talk to
the athletes there are competitions like the Commonwealth but,
if you are talking about the ultimate in sport which is the Olympics
and if you are looking for GB, I believe we are more likely to
get more medals and a better return by Team GB than we would by
breaking that up.
4 Memorandum of Understanding Back
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