Select Committee on Scottish Affairs Minutes of Evidence


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.


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