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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 658-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE SCOTTISH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOR SCOTLAND OF THE 2012 OLYMPICS
Tuesday 8 November 2005 MR SIMON CLEGG, MS SARA FRIEND, MR MIKE LEE and MS SHIRLEY ROBERTSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 69
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Scottish Affairs Committee on Tuesday 8 November 2005 Members present Mr Mohammad Sarwar, in the Chair Danny Alexander Gordon Banks Ms Katy Clark Mr Ian Davidson Mr John MacDougall Mr Jim McGovern Mr Angus MacNeil David Mundell Mr Charles Walker Mr Ben Wallace ________________ Memoranda submitted by the British Olympic Association and the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Simon Clegg, Chief Executive, Ms Sara Friend, Director of Legal Services, British Olympic Association, Mr Mike Lee, Director of Communications and Public Affairs and Ms Shirley Robertson OBE, Olympic double gold medallist, London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, examined. Q1 Chairman: I would like to welcome you to this first meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee on our inquiry into the potential benefits for Scotland of the 2012 Olympics. We are delighted that you have been able to attend, and could I give a particular welcome to one of Scotland's greatest ever Olympians, Shirley Robertson. As we said in our press release announcing the inquiry, we welcome the announcement that Hampden Park will play host to part of the football tournament, but we are seeking to identify how Scotland might attract other events, or facilitate athletes training and preparing for their events, in order to benefit local economies. Before we start on the detailed questions, do you have an opening statement you would like to make? Mr Clegg: Chairman, I think it might just be helpful if I introduce the rest of the top table, but after that introduction of Shirley I think we will leave her to take all the difficult questions. My name is Simon Clegg. I am the Chief Executive of the British Olympic Association. I am a board member of the London Olympic Bid Committee and a board member of the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. On my right is my colleague, Sara Friend, who is the BOA's Director of Legal Affairs. On my left is Mike Lee. Mike, perhaps you would like to introduce yourself. Mr Lee: I am the Director of Communications and Public Affairs for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and I held the same post for London 2012 throughout the bid campaign. I also have responsibility within the Organising Committee for overseeing the work of our Nations and Regions Group which I will happily spend a bit more time talking to the Committee about as we go through the hearing. Q2 Chairman: We understand that the Nations and Regions Group met last Friday. Are you able to report on any decisions reached or progress made by the Group? Mr Lee: Yes, Chairman. The Nations and Regions Group was created by London 2012 as a very important part of the bid process itself. It is not something we have simply invented following the IOC decision on the 6 July. That was important to us because while, obviously, you bid as a city, the IOC insists that the events are as compact as possible in and around the city. Certainly for Seb Coe and the whole team we were very clear that this was a UK-wide bid and we wanted to realise UK-wide benefits. The Nations and Regions Group, chaired by Charles Allen, who you may know is the Chief Executive of ITV, drawing from representatives from each of the nations and each of the regions of the UK met throughout the bid process and played a very important part in promoting the bid and exploring with us the potential benefits to the UK. Following our victory on 6 July we brought the Group back together within a week or so of us returning to London from Singapore and we made a decision, also in conjunction with the Government and with our other stakeholders, BOA and the GLA, that we should try and move the Nations and Regions Group on to become a body directly involved in delivering these UK benefits, no longer just a promotional campaigning body but something directly involved in helping to realise the benefits. We asked all our colleagues in the nations and regions, and relevant to you through the Scottish Executive, for representatives to be almost re-elected but with a view to a focus on the whole issue of delivering opportunities and potential benefits. In Scotland's case the main representative is Julia Bracewell, who is the chair of SportScotland, and I think is appearing before you shortly, and her deputy is David Williams who is the CEO of EventScotland. We held a very successful meeting. It was a meeting mapping out a work programme, looking at how we could develop co-ordinated approaches on everything from training camps to tourism. The body will meet on a very regular basis. Each nation or region will appoint its own full-time co-ordinator to help service the work in the area. I would say that Julia and others, perhaps, will be able to tell you directly that the feeling we have is that people do want to work in partnership. We want to make sure there is a realisation on every front and for us this is a very important part of LOCOG's work. Q3 Mr Walker: I have a few questions. I would like to know why Scotland only got football? Surely the Scottish Executive was in there pitching alongside you for the four years you were preparing your bid to make sure Scotland got a bit of the action? I think we might be arriving after the horse has bolted because you have decided on the venues now, and I think there is a feeling around this room that Scotland has not got enough out of this. I would like to know why it has not got more out of this? Was it a failing of the Scottish Executive to go in and bat for Scotland and provide you with resources, manpower and time to ensure that some more events bar a few football matches at Hampden Park came to Scotland? Mr Lee: Perhaps I will start and Simon may want to continue. You have to appreciate the nature of an Olympic bid and the requirements of the International Olympic Committee. Two things I think are worth stating. The first is that you bid as a city, not as a country, and they are very clear about that. They were also very clear that following unsuccessful bids from Manchester and Birmingham there was a strong feeling that the UK could only win with London, so it had to be a single city bid. The second is very clear - and the IOC has done a lot of work on this: they want compact Olympic Games with the vast majority of the sporting events in and around the bidding city. Where you have some flexibility, which they are prepared to live with, is on sailing, because obviously if you are a land-locked city, like London, then it is difficult to have a sailing event, and on football, where they do allow some flexibility and, indeed, are happy with the idea of a country-wide bid. Therefore, where we had that flexibility we took sailing to Weymouth and we took football around the country. There is no failing of the Scottish Executive, it is rather just the nature of the modern Olympic Games. Mr Clegg: Certainly I would just like to reinforce that. The whole ethos of the Olympic Games is about bringing the youth of the world together. Even in terms of the plans we had in London you will be aware that they changed from our initial concept, after the first report by the IOC's Evaluation Commission came through London, and we had to move some of the facilities, arrangements and plans. For example, the shooting out at Bisley was considered too far away from the Olympic village in terms of an acceptable commutable distance by the athletes. It is very much driven by the IOC and what is in the best interest of the athletes. Q4 Mr Walker: The venues you have now are pretty much fixed in stone, the venues for the event as opposed to the training facilities? That is your proposition which you took to the IOC and that is what they awarded the bid on? Mr Clegg: That is basically a legally binding agreement between ourselves and the IOC. Q5 Mr MacNeil: Chairman, do you think it is fair that the responsibility is being taken away from the Scotland and the regions of England and Wales and Northern Ireland as well to help fund what essentially is by its very nature a city bid? Mr Lee: I think there are different dimensions to this. There is the actual staging of the Games itself and where the events of the 17 days of the Olympics actually takes place, and obviously important for us as well is the Paralympics. Then there is the seven-year build up and the opportunities that come out of construction contracts, tourism opportunities, the opportunity to host international conferences, pre-games sporting events, your colleague mentioned training camps, preparation camps. We need 80,000 volunteers, we are going to have a UK-wide cultural festival which needs to be developed across the whole country, that is really the nature of an Olympic experience. We should not just be focusing on the venues and the individual sporting events, though perhaps it is worth noting we expect the whole of the Olympics to start in Scotland since the football tournament traditionally starts just ahead of the opening ceremony. Our plan at the moment is the first event should be at Hampden Park. At least symbolically that is a way of demonstrating that. It is realising the opportunities in the seven-year build up and beyond that we feel the real opportunities for the rest of the UK lie. Q6 Mr MacNeil: You mentioned the construction there, can you give the Committee examples of something which might be constructed in Scotland for the 2012 Olympics? Mr Lee: There may be improvements to sporting facilities if, for example, cities or sport institutes were to prepare for training camps. I meant the construction contracts that will come out of the new Olympic Park. The capital project that is the new Olympic Park in Lower Lea Valley in the East End of London is a £21/2 billion project and those contracts are not for one particular part of the country, they are there to be bid for by companies up and down the country. The Olympic Delivery Authority, which is being created currently through the Olympic Bill going through Parliament, will be letting those contracts and encouraging Scottish companies to bid for those contracts. Q7 Mr Davidson: I want to follow up that point about construction contracts in particular. There is an anxiety that not only is this an East London Olympics in terms of location but that much of the construction work will be undertaken by labour on the lump rather than going entirely reputable. What assurances can you give us in terms of safety, the involvement of the trade unions, is there going to be a convenor on site? How do you believe that Scottish companies might be able to get construction contracts? Mr Lee: I think it is important to understand for a moment the structure that has been created. A lot of the work at present that has been undertaken in the Lower Lea Valley - the land acquisition, the beginning of land clearance, the start of land assemblies - is with the London Development Agency. The LDA already has a very clear cut fair employment policies. They are subject to all the usual European tendering processes. They are guided by the Mayor of London, committed to recognition and involvement of trade unions. They have themselves set out a commitment to skills and training programmes to encourage the right sort of skills mix in the development of the East End site. The LDA is starting this, it will then be taken over by the Olympic Delivery Authority, the ODA, which as I said is currently being created and is subject to the Bill going through Parliament. The ODA based on the commitments of the Mayor and the other stakeholders involved in this, including LOCOG, would want to make sure that continued. It is not a question of getting cheap labour in from Eastern Europe or anywhere else, it will be based on best practice in the construction industry and subject to all the necessary bits of legislation from here and from Brussels. Q8 Mr Davidson: I am reassured by substantial amounts of that in terms of what will happen on the site. In all of that it seems to me the Scottish construction industry would not legitimately be one of the stakeholders. I can understand the words about training for the local area, I can understand the points about European procurement, but none of that gives Scotland, necessarily, an "in" so to speak in terms of construction contracts. What guarantees will there be that any Scottish firm or any Scottish labour will be employed on site? Mr Lee: Put it this way, there is nobody who is in a favoured position. There is no stakeholder in any favoured position here. These are contracts which are open for tender and for bidding. The scale of it, both in terms of the capital projects, the building of the new site and then what LOCOG will procure in due course, whether it is in terms of stadium, IT, uniforms, licensed products and so on, are also contracts that will be coming on-line from around about 2008-09 onwards. There is an ongoing process over seven years and there are potential huge amounts of business. I do not think we can stand here and guarantee that Scotland will win all of that business but I hope and trust that working through Scottish Enterprise and through the various business forums in Scotland that they are prepared and they will bid. There will be open tender going on. I will just point to the bid. In the bid we did not have much to offer in terms of contracts but one of the biggest contracts we let was the design and development of our candidate file, that was done by a Scottish company, Navy Blue, and indeed many of our banners and flags were done by a Scottish company, High Fly. All we can say is we have a track record from the bidding team and in due course those contracts will come on-line and be available through all the normal processes. We would encourage Scottish businesses to bid, bid and bid again. Q9 Mr Walker: If they are advertised in the European Journal they could go to any country in Europe? It will be done on a best value for money basis, will it not? You cannot promote one nation over another? Mr Clegg: That is the law of the land. Q10 Mr Davidson: If a Services Directive goes through, it can go through under a Lithuanian company using Lithuanian laws and so on at that stage below UK levels on health and safety and everything else, could it not? Mr Lee: We are subject to whatever law is in place at any given moment. All I can say from within the bid team itself and certainly from the GLA, the LDA, the interim-ODA, is there is a commitment here to realising as many benefits as we can for British business. Q11 Mr Davidson: Can I just clarify, what is this commitment then? This is a commitment to try, apart from that there is no commitment? Mr Lee: I think you have to look at the work of the Nations and Regions Group because there we are working in very direct partnership with the Regional Development Agencies in England, Enterprise Scotland and all of the other relevant bodies in this process. We are trying to sit down with them, get them thinking creatively about the sort of contracts that they will be bidding for, creatively about what they can offer, for example, for preparation camps for Olympic teams coming in, thinking about their tourism strategy, because one of the experiences certainly out of Sydney is what we can gain in terms of tourist benefits around the country. By using those partnerships, sharing information, planning together, we believe we can realise some of those UK benefits. Q12 Mr Wallace: Understanding the European legislation, as a Committee if we want to maximise how Scotland can benefit and given, obviously, that almost set in stone are the Olympics, we are much better off focusing on venues for training for the build up pre-Games and how we can get Team Australia, or whatever it is, to come and build up in Scotland or whatever. Is that probably the best angle for us to go down, to try and get that type of visitor benefit? Mr Clegg: Certainly it is one area. I do not want to totally negate and deflect from the other real commercial opportunities which are available through this massive project. Quite frankly, unless you have experienced an Olympic Games first hand - I suspect very few of you have - it is very difficult to take on the sheer scale of what is required to deliver an Olympic Games. There are some really hard commercial contracts to be won, worth significant sums of money, across a whole range of product areas, capital areas and service suppliers. I think that the point Mike is making is that it is a level playing field and we would encourage Scottish companies, as we would indeed companies from any parts of the United Kingdom, to put in competitive bids for whatever work becomes available. In terms of the more substantive point regarding training camps, you are absolutely right this has now become quite an important area of preparations. Quite frankly, the last couple of weeks before an athlete enters into the Olympic village are critical in terms of their performance in the Olympic arena. One of the things the British Olympic Association has developed internationally, really since 1996, is this concept of multi-sport preparation camps where we will bring the whole team together, in our case Team GB, or as many sports as possible within the constraints of the facilities we have. Of course you cannot replicate the type of facilities you are going to see in the Olympic City. We go into the market place and secure a city or a region that can best support Team GB and other developed and sophisticated countries, and increasingly less sophisticated countries, are also waking up to the fact that this final two weeks in country is critical. There are major opportunities there, not only for the Edinburghs, Glasgows and Stirlings of Scotland but also perhaps some of the larger towns and smaller cities as well. Q13 Mr Wallace: You will, therefore, have to be letting contracts for effectively a pre-training centre whereby a city could provide as much of the disciplines as possible in one place? Mr Clegg: It does not quite work like that. Certainly LOCOG, and Mike will speak to this, will provide some co-ordinating brochure to the 202 National Olympic Committees. What you will find is a number of the more sophisticated teams, like ourselves, will be proactive and going into the market place. You have to accept that we are going to be competing against France, Belgium, Spain and Germany, maybe, for this slice of the business. It is quite important that it is organised in a co-ordinated and thorough fashion. It is not just about have we or have we not got a 50 metre swimming pool, the number of sports that are covered in an Olympic programme are 26 and you have to remember that in Sydney exactly half of the ten 200 National Olympic Committees, 100 competed with ten or less athletes. Many people aspire, perhaps, to attracting China, the United States or Great Britain but there are small communities which could attract some of the smaller teams as well and that could be their interface, contribution and support for the Olympic movement in 2012. Mr Lee: As Simon hinted there we do not let the contracts. What we are trying to do - and at the heart of this is the Nations and Regions Group - is work together through organisations such as Sport Scotland to develop an approach which will encourage people to tailor their facilities and perhaps improve their facilities in a way which we think will work in the international market in attracting either individual Olympic Committee teams or perhaps even individual sports. There is a working group that has been created and we are trying to make sure, also, that the co-ordination makes the whole UK stronger because, as Simon said, the competition in this case could come from France, Belgium, Spain and Germany. We need a UK-wide proposition here which we want to take to the whole Olympic movement. I just want to say one other thing which is it is important not to rush this because the vast majority of Olympic teams have not even settled on their training camps at Beijing, let alone thinking about it for 2012. Therefore, we feel very strongly that we need to make sure we have got full audit facilities, improvements have been made in a way that is relevant to attracting teams for preparation and we would seek to launch this at the time of Beijing in 2008. Q14 Mr MacNeil: What you are saying is the competitors from the competing cities are going to be all around London, including the Continent. Scotland or any other parts of the UK are not really first choice. Your job, therefore, is to try and ensure committees from other countries base themselves in the UK rather than across the Channel in Belgium or elsewhere? Mr Lee: Yes. Obviously we have a vested interest in trying to make sure as many of those teams come to the UK. Most of them will want to be outside London because London does not provide an ideal setting for preparation. Q15 Mr MacNeil: Your concern at the moment is how many will come to the UK and how many will base themselves in continental Europe or Ireland or wherever? Mr Clegg: It is difficult to quantify that at this moment in time but let us not forget that a significant percentage of the Olympic movement, their second language after the mother tongue is English and, therefore, you will expect to see a significant percentage of the overall teams that invest in these pre-Games training doing so here in the United Kingdom. Q16 Mr MacNeil: Would you expect more than 50 per cent to come to the UK and Scotland? Mr Clegg: I am not avoiding answering the question. It is very difficult to quantify that, if you go back to 1996 which in relative Olympic terms is quite recent, three Games ago, I think that there were only five or six countries which did pre-Games training. The situation develops each Games that we go to. Ms Friend: It is hard to quantify because a lot of the time it is the acclimatisation that is the issue. For a lot of the continental Europe countries they do not have a time difference or a climate change which will lead them to necessarily decamp prior to the Games, unlike going to China or Australia where it was important for us to take the British team over early for acclimatisation purposes. Q17 Mr MacNeil: In 1996 it was five or six countries, two in the last Games, in Athens, how many? Mr Clegg: I think probably Australia is a better example. There were probably the best part of half the National Olympic Committees, about 100, were involved in some pre-Games training in country. As my colleague said, that does represent the time difference and the travelling distance people had to go through to get there. Ms Robertson: As an athlete you would want to be in the UK because you want to get used to eating bangers and mash or whatever it is, you want to get used to that. I think in Scotland we are quite well placed now. If I was coming from abroad I would seriously look at Scotland. We have the Institute in Stirling; Glasgow and Edinburgh have good facilities but also regionally because of the development of the Scottish Institute regionally in Dundee and in Largs, really good regional facilities and not just sports facilities but sports medicine and physiology, all of the kinds of things which as a team you would look for. I think, also, one area is events, certainly now we are starting to race in China, three years out we are going to China, we want to experience China. It does not have to be where the venue is going to be, we just want to go there. It has been the same for the last four Olympics which I have been to, in that four year period you are looking to go to events in that country. I think in Scotland we are well placed for events and to push for that, to push for holding events in Scotland. Mr Clegg: Particularly in sport, Glasgow has bid for the Commonwealth Games and in terms of bringing athletes through to Scotland I can see that being very important. Q18 David Mundell: It goes without saying my constituency would be happy to have China or the Solomon Islands but I want to come back to a point you made, Mr Clegg, about the scale of the Olympics and the resource required. How satisfied are you of how much work that has been done on how the build up to the Olympics will impact on other ongoing infrastructure and construction projects which are in the pipeline already? For example, the Scottish Executive are committed to a number of large scale infrastructure projects such as the extension of the M74. Are we clear that all that is required for the Olympics can go ahead without it distorting the ability to carry on other major projects throughout the rest of the United Kingdom? Mr Clegg: I will let Mike lead on this because it is primarily a LOCOG issue and then I will come in after. Mr Lee: I think all the evidence we have, and obviously the conversations we have had with the CBI, Government and various skills and training agencies, tells us that they can be delivered and it should not distort the market. I think you are right there is a challenge there and it is not one that LOCOG itself can resolve. Certainly in the conversations we have had with all partners, stakeholders and many other agencies, they are very alive to this. I would say it is something the Construction Industry Training Board and many others need to be working on because we are talking about a major boost to the UK economy with a huge demand on a number of different skills areas. Everything we have been told so far leaves us reassured. Mr Clegg: Certainly I would support that and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport outlined this very issue at the Olympic board meeting yesterday. The Government is very conscious of it and is monitoring the situation carefully. Q19 Danny Alexander: I would like to get back to this issue about training camps. You talked about the Sydney Olympics and obviously the British team was based in Queensland, a good few hundred miles away from Sydney. What factors influenced that choice? Were there any incentives offered by the authorities in Australia to encourage teams to base themselves in more peripheral parts of Australia for their training camps? Mr Clegg: A lot of factors were taken into account before we came to our final decision in terms of where to site the British team. You can understand, as I stressed before, it is absolutely critical to get that two week period right before competition. We were going into the market place across the whole of Australia and we were trying to find the venues that in the first instance had compatible facilities to the team that we were going to be taking to the Games. Quite frankly, we were not interested in basketball courts or baseball pitches if those sports were not going to be represented in the British team. It is very much horses for courses based upon the composition of the team that you have. We went into the market place because we knew that Australia was going to be such a challenging Games in terms of distance and time difference in 1995, so even before we went to Atlanta we were starting to think about the process. Even at that stage we were being approached by New Zealand, which came over to the UK to try and sell us the concept of going to New Zealand, and we had approaches from Fiji. We were very clear in our mind that we wanted to be in mainland Australia. One of the things was we took into account all the different factors, not least of which was the commuting distance from the Gold Coast and the fact that we could come in on British Airways aeroplanes into Brisbane but we could fly out of the Gold Coast airport and fly straight into Sydney. Communications played a key point as well. Probably one of the most crucial factors was a very clear understanding that we had that everyone from the Mayor down in the Gold Coast was desperate to have the British team, Queensland in particular. We were made to feel extremely welcome and we were given some support on the ground which would have cost us financially otherwise to encourage us to go with the Gold Coast. That included support for athletes, supporter provisions and the support of locally seconded staff to support our operation out there. At the end of the day it would not matter what that support had been, quite frankly, if the facilities had not been to the standard we wanted, and if the commuting time had been unacceptable to us then we would not have gone to the Gold Coast. Q20 Danny Alexander: Having had that experience, are there things which the London Olympic bid will be doing? You mentioned earlier the audit facilities to show other teams what we have available in Scotland but will there be other incentives or ideas or support offered to teams to say "Come and base yourselves in Dundee, Stirling, Inverness", wherever it is? Are there practical encouragements to ensure that the teams from other countries choose Scotland as their training camps? Mr Lee: Certainly LOCOG organised a Nations and the Regions Group seminar in January of this year and, indeed, the whole of the afternoon session was dedicated to providing local council officers with the opportunity of coming up to speed with the opportunities that arise out of posting multi-sport camps in preparation for the Olympic Games. Now that London has been successful I know that the focus will be even greater and we will be working with LOCOG to make sure the blue print that the British team uses - and please do not take that as being the blue print that every country uses out there because it is certainly not the case - and the sort of issues that we need to address in determining where we want the British team, Team GB, to stay in the preparations for the Games are made known to everyone in the UK, and individual cities and towns can then base their own strategy around that. Mr Lee: Through the Nations and Regions Group we have created a small working group which involves UK Sport, all the home country sports councils, including Sport Scotland, the BOA, and LOCOG itself to look in detail at this and to be thinking about these different sorts of cells that you want to make. As Simon has said, Team GB is an example of a multi-sport large Olympic Committee with a real investment in a preparation camp but that is at the top end of the scale, you can come all the way down the scale, so we are trying to think about how we can tailor make this and that is why different facilities and different configurations could still be relevant. The other thing to mention is that during the bid itself we did publish a commitment which the IOC suggested we withdrew, so we did, but it stays on the table as far as the Olympic Committees are concerned, which is we want to provide training grants to Olympic Committees that they can only cash in the UK. The figure we used in the course of the bid was $50,000 which would be available. In other words, LOCOG provides this grant to an Olympic team but you can only use it at the point of training in the UK at one of the accredited training camps that LOCOG itself would accredit. The whole point of this exercise is to improve the offer of the whole of the UK because it is partly about trying to make sure that Scotland and other parts of the country benefit but it is also trying to see off the opposition from Spain, Germany, France and others. It is a combination of getting the overall package co-ordinated and right and improved, where appropriate, with the training grants and also educating people, through Simon's experience and others, on how to make approaches to Olympic teams that we think we can be successful. It is a challenge and we will need a lot of co-operation to get that. Q21 Mr MacDougall: I want to clear up an issue you mentioned earlier. You mentioned that Hampden Park would be the venue for the opening, the kick off, if you like, of the Olympic Games prior to the official ceremony, and that is to be welcomed, and also the fact that I believe Hampden Park will play host to one of the quarter final matches, again which is welcomed. If I picked you up correctly, I think what you said was there is no possibility that Scotland can pursue the prospect of any other event coming to Scotland now. Can I touch on one or two points that may constrain in terms of decision-making. For example, there does not seem to be a connection between an excellent venue, a world-known venue, in terms of Lords, the holding of archery at Lords does not seem to ring true. There seems to be some strangeness of choice there. How do you reach a decision like that in terms of choosing a venue like that? Mr Lee: It goes back to the earlier point, you are producing a venue map, if you wish, that fits the overall blue print of the IOC. They are very clear and they have very detailed reports they have done on this of what they want to see from a bidding city. A part of that, I may say, is getting the best use of existing venues within the bidding city. Therefore, we had to be realistic about what was required in terms of the new Olympic Park and this major investment and how we could utilise other venues within London. Cricket is not an Olympic sport but Lords is a magnificent venue. I have to say beach volleyball at Horse Guard's Parade, archery at Lords and a triathlon and road racing around Hyde Park and surrounding areas were very attractive to the IOC because these are great settings for Olympic sport. Q22 Mr MacDougall: If, for example, the IOC decided that they wanted to bring into the Olympic Games an exhibition tournament such as Rugby Sevens, would the same criteria apply to that situation? Mr Clegg: I am afraid there are no longer any exhibition demonstration sports in the Olympic Games. The last time we saw demonstration sports in the Olympic Games was in Barcelona in 1992. At that stage the IOC decided to do away with exhibition sports and concentrate purely upon the Olympic programme. Q23 Mr Walker: Do you see a big role for the Scottish Executive and perhaps the Secretary of State for Scotland in selling Scotland as a venue for training camps? I come back to the point I made originally. Will you be encouraging them to work with you closely on this? You cannot do it all for them, if they want sports in Scotland they have to go out there and earn their salary and bring them to Scotland to the training camps. Is that something you believe they are going to do and they are excited to do and want to do? Mr Clegg: I do not know whether they are excited to do it and whether they intend to take it up. Certainly there is an opportunity there for them if they wish to. Q24 Mr Walker: That is amazing. Mr Lee: I must say more directly through the Nations and Regions Group and LOCOG, the co-operation that we have had from the Scottish Executive, the First Minister, the relevant minister, Patricia Ferguson, has been excellent both during the bid - and in fact the First Minister himself was in Athens, for example, supporting the bid - and in promoting the bid throughout Scotland. Internationally too we have had first-class support. I would say this, the approach about representation on the Nations and Regions Group has been taken up very quickly within Scotland. To have people of the calibre of Julia Bracewell and David Williams is a sign of commitment and ultimately they report to the Scottish Executive. I think the co-operation has been good and the answer to the challenge you laid down is that the signs are that they do want to meet that challenge, not just in preparation camps. I would say one thing to the Committee - Simon and I talked about this before coming into the room - we know that it is focused on preparation camps but in tourism, conventions and conferences, as Shirley said in other sporting events, non-Olympic, non-training, there are all sorts of opportunities that go with a modern Olympic Games. If you look at Sydney particularly, whether it was in New South Wales in general or in Queensland, they were realising a lot of benefit from the fact that the Games were there in 2000. Our appeal would be this to you, not to conclude that the only opportunities are in training camps, they are in all these other areas. I think particularly you might say the showcasing of Scotland, both pre and after the Games, when so many visitors will come into the UK and athletes will be here and stay here and all the global media coverage that will come, particularly in the last four year build up, is a great opportunity, whether it is Visit Scotland or EventScotland they appear, from our perspective, to be on the case. Mr Clegg: I would say it is still very early days in this training concept argument, trying to pull everything together. National Olympic Committees at the moment are focused upon very challenging Games in Beijing in 2008 and, quite frankly, the vast majority of them will not even start thinking about pre-Games preparation camps for 2012 probably until 2010. We know there is a huge amount of enthusiasm out there in the community to grasp a piece of this action because for many it will be the closest they will get to the Olympic Games in 2012 in London. It needs to be done in a co-ordinated fashion and I am absolutely sure Mike is right, the Scottish Executive has been absolutely solid behind this bid since day one. It has been very supportive, and there is no reason why that support should not continue once we go further down the road in this concept of trying to pull together the British training camp opportunities. Q25 Mr Davidson: As you say, Scotland has the advantage of speaking a version of English! I want to pick up the point about training camps. Am I right in assuming that individual nations will want to have their entire range of athletes and participants together and, therefore, sites for camps have to have accessible to them and the whole range of facilities or will teams be split up in some way? If they are split up, are there any particular choke points? Maybe in Scotland there is a shortage of 50 metre pools or a shortage of this or a shortage of that which would tend to be a particular thing we ought to be focusing on getting resolved. Mr Clegg: Can I take the last point first of all because I think it is a really important point. People should not be building any facilities based upon a possible commercial opportunity for two weeks before 17 days of competition in 2012. What I will be suggesting, however, is where towns and cities have got as part of their long-term sports development strategy facilities coming on-stream that may otherwise come on-stream in 2012, it could be an incentive to fast track them. I think any suggestion that people should be building new facilities to capitalise on this commercial opportunity are wrong. We spoke earlier on about some of the incentives we got from the Gold Coast. One of the conditions of us going to the Gold Coast was that we paid no hire fees for any of the facilities that we had access to. Regarding the first point, you are absolutely right, not all countries organise their pre-Games preparation on a multi-sport basis, in fact very few do, indeed even the British team struggled in the build up to Athens to find one site that could accommodate the whole of the British team. We had about 13 sports based in Cyprus, on two different sites in Cyprus that were probably about a 40 minute drive between the two sites; we had a number of teams that were based in Barcelona; we had a couple of teams based in the UK and we had a couple of teams based in Athens, Shirley and the rest of the sailing team, one of those teams where they needed to be on the Olympic water for as long as possible in the years leading up to the Games. Even countries that organise themselves on a multi-sport basis may be fragmented, depending upon the facilities that are available in a particular city or town. Many sports will organise their pre-Games preparation on a single sports basis. The United States Olympic Committee is a very good example where they do no co-ordinated training under the umbrella of the United States Olympic Committee. The United States Track and Field Federation goes off and does its own training, indeed some individual athletes will do their own training outside of the official training within their own federation. It is quite fragmented and whilst there are attractions to securing some of the multi-sport opportunities through the larger countries and NOCs that organise themselves in that manner, there are also many other opportunities based around single sports chances around single sport facilities that may exist in a single city or a single town. Q26 Mr Davidson: Can I clarify in terms of sailing are there adequate facilities in Scotland to attract sailing teams to use Scotland as a pre-Olympic ground? Ms Robertson: I think the reality is because sailing is so venue specific we will open up Weymouth and everyone will train in that specific venue. Sailing is perhaps a bad example, swimming pools are more similar. Q27 Mr Walker: May I say, I asked my colleague to ask that question so I take full responsibility for that crummy question. Ms Robertson: What they might do is they might come to events in the UK and get used to the UK, and that is very, very common. When the Games were in Barcelona we had events the length and breadth of Spain. Also, they will want to come for holidays. Even when we were in Athens, we were training in Athens you tend to go out and you have to go somewhere else, somewhere different, just for a break. A lot of athletes and families will do that. Q28 Mr Davidson: Following up the point about the training facilities, can I clarify about technologies, having got this quite clear in my own mind. In terms of swimming, athletics, gymnastics or anything similar, the facilities that the disciplines would want to access would be the facilities that were then useable by everybody else in the community both before and after? They are not so specialised that they would only be used for that and nothing else, are they? Mr Clegg: Absolutely. When we go into the market place we are not expecting people to build new facilities for us. What we may do is we may work with the local council to upgrade them to our specification, we may lay down requirements regarding access to the public for those facilities and how we make sure that we get a balance between our specific and controlled needs and those of the wider public. Visiting NOCs are not unreasonable in terms of their requirements and there is no expectation that new facilities will be built. Please bear in mind, of course, that we are talking about training facilities, we are not talking about competition facilities. I am not interested in what spectator capacity there may be, and quite a lot of the indoor sports can be adapted to indoor halls which can host judo, wrestling, weightlifting, fencing, just by bringing in the necessary equipment. Q29 Mr McGovern: I think this is possible a question for Simon: you mentioned other places had tried to encourage the British team to locate with them, Fiji, for example was mentioned. I heard you say about support from the Scottish Executive who sent some of their officers there. Who is it who should be taking the lead in trying to attract countries to locate in Scotland for their training camps? Should it be the Westminster Government, Scottish Executive, local authorities, sports organisations, who should it be? Secondly, when the British team located in Queensland you mentioned about the excellent transport links and communication links. Do you feel the transport system within the UK and from the UK to the Continent, the UK to North America, is sufficient to attract teams to Scotland at the moment? Mr Lee: Just on the first question, what we are trying to do is create co-ordination through the Nations and Regions Group. The working group that is doing the detailed work and looking at the current facilities, improvements that have been made, making best use of the audit that has been undertaken and looking at how we create an accredited training camp system across the UK is through the home country sports councils. The key body there, certainly doing the technical work, is Sport Scotland. I think once that work is completed and we get to around 2007-08 and selling this to the Olympic Committees across the world, we then expect the relevant leading bodies, in your case probably Scottish Executive, to have a key role in highlighting what the offer is from Scotland. What we are trying to do here, as we have said, is create a co-ordinated approach so that the UK is able to resist pressure from other countries and, for example, we know that a pitch from the Institute in Stirling is not being done in a head to head with, say, the University of Loughborough because, frankly, Stirling might lose. We would rather think about how we can not quite carve up the world market but make the best possible offer to those 200-odd Olympic Committees and all their teams. There will definitely be a promotional role. We would argue, certainly at this stage, to go out and try to promote this internationally is far too early and you could end up disadvantaging yourselves because this would not go down well with Olympic teams and committees. Mr Clegg: Certainly I would support that. I think an aggressive approach to this business opportunity could be counter-productive. I think the developed NOCs, irrespective of what approaches we make to them, will go into the market place with their own parameters and flush out where they think is best for them. The less developed teams will rely on LOCOG and the publication that Mark and his colleagues will be putting together which will be published around the Beijing Games which will highlight the opportunities based upon the specific opportunities in each of the towns and cities that fall within the criteria. I think that our contribution is to highlight to people the way that we do our business and the way that we, as a National Olympic Committee, would go about identifying where the best place would be for the British team, and the factors that we take into account. Q30 Mr McGovern: There were two questions I put, the other one was about transport links in Scotland. Mr Clegg: I am very comfortable with the transport links from Scotland down to London. If you think about the British team where we were based on the Gold Coast flying into Brisbane, we were driving for over an hour down to the Gold Coast, and flying down to Sydney; likewise in terms of Tallahassee, a good hour and a half's flight, an hour's flight up to Atlanta. In Barcelona we are talking about a good couple of hours flying time to Athens. I am very comfortable geographically from a transport perspective in terms of where you sit for people training in Scotland and then coming into the Olympic village in London. Q31 Gordon Banks: A couple of pieces of clarification. Are we to take from what you have said that training camps usually have a lifespan of two weeks prior to the Games? Mr Clegg: That is when it is full-on in a very focused manner. What we found in the arrangements we put in place with the Gold Coast was that we wanted to test our own systems, so we had the whole of the team there in 2000 and we actually took a whole load of sports down to the Gold Coast in 1999 in a co-ordinated NOC fashion. That allowed us to test our own systems and structures and allowed them to go on to Sydney and experience what was happening down there. Q32 Gordon Banks: Can I interject. Obviously by that time you had made your decision where you were going? Mr Clegg: Absolutely. On top of that, individual teams were going down to the Gold Coast and continue to go down to the Gold Coast today as part of their preparations for worldwide events. A very good example is the swimming team which spends quite a lot of its time down in the Gold Coast based upon the pool that we put in place for 2000. Q33 Gordon Banks: Would it be fair to say, also, if we take the two weeks as a standard period, equestrian events may have a longer period because of acclimatisation of the animals as well? Is that a fair assumption as well, where there are animals concerned the location of the camp may be even longer? Mr Clegg: There are two sports which tend to be quite specific to the venue. Let us be clear why we do multi-sport training camps, and that is if we go into the Olympic City in the weeks leading up to the Games you simply will not get into or on to the facilities, they are closed down in pre-Games preparation mode. There is no point coming to London because you will not get into the Olympic facilities which are going to be used for 2012. The two sports which have got quite specific requirements are sailing - and that is why most of the sailors spend quite a lot of time on the water where the Olympic Games are going to be and, of course, it is not a confined facility in the same respect as an athletic stadium is or a swimming pool - and the other one is the equestrian teams because of the quarantine regulations, and overcoming those and making sure that horses who tend not to travel that well have the minimum amount of travel possible. What tends to happen is that the four-legged athletes arrive in situ in the host city in the weeks leading up to the Games and are focused in a special facility there that would safeguard them and allow them to prepare for the Olympic Games. Q34 Gordon Banks: I think Mike made a point about the $50,000 incentive for countries setting up training camps in the UK. First of all, how far does $50,000 go? My assumption is not very far, so there is there an incentive that people will just discount it because it is not particularly relevant to the overall cost, although it may be for a smaller nation. That leads me on to the next point, is it $50,000 irrespective of the size of the nation that comes or is it up to $50,000? Mr Lee: We need to do more detailed work. What we proposed in the bid phase - we regard this as a commitment to the Olympic Committees - was $50,000 irrespective of size and that would be a standard grant that you could only utilise in an accredited UK training camp. Just to be clear, Simon may want to emphasise this point, $50,000 for some of the smaller teams is a huge amount of money. Q35 Gordon Banks: We appreciate that. It is a drop in the ocean, I imagine, to what we would spend? Mr Clegg: We spent in excess of a million pounds sterling on the Gold Coast and that was just the British team, not the travelling British press and the media and the families and friends and the pre-Games business and the subsequent post-Games business as well. Q36 Gordon Banks: A final point, I take it from what has been said earlier, and it is a logical conclusion from what has been said but I have to ask the question, we have not identified any locations where the UK camp will be? Mr Clegg: At this moment in time, no, we have not. We have started that process because the most important thing for us is to ensure we deliver in 2012. We cannot afford to get that wrong. That process has started. Q37 Gordon Banks: How long do you see that process taking? I know you said the IOC countries will want to look at it in 2010, and I understand the fact, also, that you might look at it quicker than that, but how long is that deliberation period that the UK organisation will have before coming to a decision? Mr Clegg: It will take as long as it takes. I am sorry, that is not being flippant. We need to work this through, we need to work with the governing bodies because, quite frankly, there is no point in us saying we are going to go to X if the performance directors turn around and say "We do not want to go there, we want to do our own training because, quite frankly, we have got a velodrome in Manchester" or "we have got a national track on centre elevation in Loughborough" or whatever. We need to work with the sports. What I am absolutely convinced of is that we need to make our decision whilst all the opportunities are still open to us and before they have been closed down by any other countries, so I am very astute to that issue. Mr Lee: Simon told me before we came in it would not be in France! Gordon Banks: That is good news. Q38 Mr Walker: Very briefly, on the Olympics, in the year before the Olympics on the acclimatisation, there are 26 sports with multiple disciplines, what measures will we be taking to bring their annual world championships to our shores? Surely, if I am completely wrong on sailing in Scotland, the idea of hosting world championships in Scotland as part of the acclimatisation process must have some merit, and that really must be an opportunity? Mr Clegg: There is a major piece of work being undertaken by LOCOG because they have to test all of the venues, in all 26 sports there needs to be a test event in each of the Olympic venues and that allows LOCOG, in our case, to test their own systems and their own structures with live athletes. There will be in place a proper strategic plan that will in some instances involve world events, European events and other events, national events, to allow LOCOG to go through that process. Over and above that, UK Sport, through their major events division, is responsible for the UK strategy of attracting major international events to the UK. It is quite obvious that process and that strategy has to go on and happen in tandem with what LOCOG will be doing in terms of test events. Q39 Ms Clark: You have explained the reasons why you decided to base the British team on the Gold Coast and the facilities and support that was provided there, and you decided to go ahead with that despite the fact it was, I think, 600 miles away from where most of the events were taking place. Thinking back, do you think the facilities lived up to expectations and were there any disadvantages in being further away from the main events? Mr Clegg: I think perhaps it would be wrong to ask me that question but I can answer it by providing you with the answer the athletes gave us. They felt that the significant improvement in the British team from one gold medal and 36th in the medal table in Atlanta in 1996 to ten gold medals and tenth in the medal table in 2000, a major contributing factor had been the whole basis of the preparation during that critical two week period before the Games on the Gold Coast. Shirley can speak for the other athletes as well but of course, bearing in mind what I said earlier on, with sailing they were based down on the water in Sydney. Ms Robertson: We did go to the Gold Coast in both years before the Games for R&R, and also to be part of the team. There was medical back-up there as well. It was important for us even though we were not putting oars in the water on the Gold Coast. It was a really good set up. You have to remember the British team is really well organised and very well respected; not all teams are quite so thorough. Q40 Ms Clark: It is reckoned that Queensland made probably about £26 million out of the training camps that were set up before those Olympics. Has there been any work done as to what the economic impact might be of training camps being set up in the lead up to our Olympics? Mr Lee: Not specifically on training camps. In fact, if you look at the Queensland example, the overall game to the Queensland economy was far greater than that, both in terms of contracts won, tourism boosts, what they call showcasing Queensland. The figures are closer, they say, to £250 million in total. The economic impact that has so far been done in the context of the London Games tells us that the boost that it could lead to for the UK economy can vary between one and four billion, partly depending on how active we are. I think one of the messages that hopefully is coming across today is that these are opportunities but they are not God given certainties. People have got to own the right to host those camps, to take advantage of the tourist opportunities to win those contracts. I do think there is a challenge here for the nations and regions. What we are doing suggests they are up for it because if we do not take advantage of it in the UK others will take advantage of it. Q41 Ms Clark: That is obviously one of the reasons that we are looking at this issue and have invited you along today, all of us want to make sure that Scotland does everything that can be done to make sure that we benefit as much as possible from this Olympics. Mr Lee: Just to say, David Williams, who is the CEO of EventScotland, worked in Queensland. I do not know if you have met him, I think he is going to be one of your witnesses. It would be interesting to talk to him about Queensland. I think he is quite usefully placed because Queensland is further from Sydney than Scotland is from London. Queensland realised all those opportunities and EventScotland themselves talked about somewhere in the region of a £100 million boost. Their focus is on conferences, conventions and non-sporting events. That is an area the Committee may well want to look at. Q42 David Mundell: I want to clarify something that I think you said in relation to the point Gordon raised about equestrian events. What you are saying is that there is no prospect of the equestrian teams coming to Scotland because, superficially for rural Scotland, that would look to be one of the pitches they could make in relation to the non-track and field and swimming pool. Basically you are saying there is likely to be no realistic prospect of equestrian teams being based in Scotland. Mr Clegg: I think one has to be realistic and the chances are extremely slim. You will find horses flying in on 707 jets converted to stables probably on a multi-country basis, planes going from country A to country B, picking up horses and delivering them to Stansted and probably straight into the Olympic area from there. Q43 David Mundell: On the basis of what you said I fully understand that and I think it is fairly important so that people do not go down a route of trying to do that because superficially it seems an option. Can I just ask you about the interesting wording which I think appears in some of the London Organising literature about the relocation of swimming pools and arenas post-Olympics. What does that practically mean? Is it effectively just dismantling them and moving them? Mr Lee: Yes. Q44 David Mundell: Is there any concept as to how that process will work? Mr Lee: Again, that is something that is under discussion but as a commitment that was given relating to the technology that is now in place, where it is possible, to have essentially demountable arenas and also, frankly, swimming pools which can literally be lifted out of the ground and moved. Certainly, for example, the new aquatic centre that will be a key part of the Olympic Park will have far more facilities in terms of training pools than it can sustain in legacy mode once the Games have been and gone. Therefore, what we have proposed is that some of those temporary arenas - and we are very clear incidentally - in the Olympic Park, of all the new venues that have been created only five will be permanent venues within the Olympic Park, the rest will be temporary venues and, therefore, the proposal is that a number of those should be demounted and relocated ideally within the UK itself. Q45 David Mundell: There is no process for that? Mr Lee: That is part of what we call our legacy planning as we are looking at the development of the Olympic Park and it is identifying those venues that will remain in the Olympic Park which will be adjusted to legacy use, the most obvious of which is the main stadium which will go from 80,000 seats to 25,000 to then be a track and field centre and a major new international facility. There are many other venues, including the training pools at the aquatic centre, which potentially are there for reuse in other parts of the country. Q46 David Mundell: Does the Nation and Regions Group have a role in that process? Mr Lee: Potentially, yes, because one of the things we have been working on with the DCMS in particular is legacy becoming a part of the brief of the Nations and Regions Group. Legacy exists in many different forms: education, health, sports facilities, future use of the Olympic Park, tourism opportunities and so on. The range of those work areas, the nations and regions will be invited to be a part of that. Q47 David Mundell: In relation to the emphasis on young people to participate, where do you see the balance lying between encouraging people who are already participating at the moment to move up to elite athlete status and go for Olympic participation, and those who currently may be doing no sport whatsoever and just start getting involved? Mr Lee: Just to say, if I may, on behalf of LOCOG, and I am sure Simon will want to comment on behalf of the BOA, from a LOCOG perspective, we are not responsible either for grass root sport or for elite sport, we are responsible to the IOC to stage a great Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. However, when we won the right to stage those Games, and indeed the whole bid campaign was based on the principle of inspiring more young people into sport, we felt our job was to keep the momentum of that going, to open the doors that others must go through, through the sports development programmes and the work that is being done in improving elite performance. We hope the effect of a 2012 Games, both in the run up to 2012 and beyond, is to achieve both, to inspire more young people to participate and also to improve our own elite performance. Mr Clegg: From my perspective we need to go back to why we conceived this bid back in 1997, and that was a very clear understanding that nothing had the potential to move sport higher or more quickly up both the political and social agendas in this country. Certainly through the successful bid that has been achieved politically and we believe the position will be sustained for the next seven years. I think the real opportunity and the real challenge now is to move sport within the social agenda. Obviously we have a remit for the high performance end of sport in terms of leading and managing the British team at the Olympic Games but, quite frankly, we need kids to be motivated by the Olympic Games being hosted in London to take up sport. A lot of work needs to be done with the home country sports councils where the main responsibility for this area sits in conjunction with the governing bodies. Collectively we need to put in place a system that will take people from grass roots all the way up to the Olympic podium in as seamless a transition as possible. If we achieve our goal of delivering fourth place in the medal table in 2012 and we have not driven a whole new generation of kids into sport then we will all have failed. Q48 Mr MacNeil: You will have heard of the excellent C-ScOT campaign for an independent Scottish Olympic team. Why should there not be an independent Scottish Olympic team? I think it would be an interesting example. FIFA and the Commonwealth Games Federation allow Scotland and, indeed, England to participate and showcase themselves on the international stage. Mr Clegg: I am going to ask my colleague to lead on this, and then I will follow it up. Ms Friend: I am afraid I did not hear the very end of your question. Q49 Mr MacNeil: The fact that FIFA and the Commonwealth Games Federation allow Scotland and, indeed, England to showcase themselves on the international stage, why? Ms Friend: The Olympic movement is obviously run and governed by the Olympic Committee and their rules and regulations which effectively make up the Olympic Charter. Through that it is the IOC's remit, and they are the only body with this jurisdiction, to decide how to recognise National Olympic Committees. In turn it is only a National Olympic Committee that can lead a delegation to the Olympic Games. The IOC Charter, currently, in rule 31 states that they will only recognise or grant National Olympic Committee status to an independent country recognised by the international community. There are a number of other sub-texts that have to be made and registered and recognised by five international federations and various other things. It is entirely within the remit of the international Olympic Committee not the British Olympic association or, with due respect, the government of any one country to decide how it is recognised in the Olympic movement. Q50 Mr MacNeil: When you see countries as small as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda participating, surely an ancient such as Scotland should be able to participate? Ms Friend: I can completely understand the frustration and the element of inconsistency. Q51 Mr Davidson: I do not understand it. Ms Friend: However, again, it is entirely within the IOC's remit and the rules did change in 1996 and the territories that have been identified in other sectors as having National Olympic Committee status who are not independent countries recognised by the international community were all granted NOC status before 1996 when the IOC changed their rules. Before that their rules stated that they had open remit within themselves to decide whether a territory or a geographical area did warrant National Olympic Committee status but they have changed their rules. Q52 Mr MacNeil: Looking at the old USSR, in 1998 they had 132 medals, when it became 15 independent nations they managed to get 162 medals. People were made aware of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Moldova. Is it not far better we see Scotland as a full member? Mr Clegg: Those are independent states recognised by the international community. Prior to 1996 the rule within the Olympic Charter stated that the definition of a country was a country, state, territory or part of a territory which the IOC in its absolute discretion considers an area of a recognised NOC. They changed that in 1996. Since that time the rules and regulations state that the expression "country" means an independent state recognised by the international community and that is the rule the IOC has stuck to since that time. Q53 Mr MacNeil: Looking at the participation means, would it not be better if the British Olympic Association Committee started lobbying to allow England, Wales and Scotland to put their names high up with Moldova? Ms Robertson: Angus, can I ask you a question? Do you know how many gold medals the Cayman Islands won at the last Olympics? Q54 Mr MacNeil: How many competitors did the Cayman Islands have? Ms Robertson: One. Q55 Mr MacNeil: I asked you a question. Ms Robertson: Now I understand how it works. For an athlete it is a really scary prospect to be pulled out of the British team and compete for Scotland, for lots of different reasons. I sailed in a three person team last time with two girls who live near Heathrow, English girls brought up in the English system. To be honest, I do not know who I would have sailed with in Scotland, there just was not that range of talent. Also, we draw on such expertise and resources. We have talked about the goal camps, the British goal camp is something to be looked at and something to be admired. It goes way beyond that. To be out on my own, without the support that we have being part of the bigger team, is really scary and I think you would struggle to win. I think if Chris Hoyt was here he would say the same thing. He won his gold medal in cycling because he was part of a much bigger team, he was part of that British team which trained in Manchester with all the resources and technical support, and that is why he won the gold medal. Also, if you ask us, we are competing for Scotland. I am Scottish but I am also British. In a way I feel slightly aggrieved, scratch me and I am blue and white underneath. Chairman: We would like to take evidence from you more often. Q56 Mr MacNeil: If it is a big team, would you go for a European Union team? Ms Robertson: It is not about wanting to be part of a big team, it is that I want to win, and I want to win for Scotland and I want to win for Britain and I want to win. I do not want to go to the Olympics and watch somebody else's flag going up the flagpole and hear someone else's anthem, I want to hear the British Anthem. Mr MacNeil: If your team mates were French would you be interested in a European Union team? Mr Walker: Angus wants you to be a martyr to the cause. Q57 Chairman: Perhaps you could answer this question: how would the Scottish themselves think about this report of a Scottish team? Ms Robertson: I think we were a bit upset that it came up and it came up in the media. We feel we are doing our best for Scotland and Scotland did really well at the last games, two gold medals, a silver and a bronze from a small nation. The Cayman Islands did not win any medals. We feel passionate that we are Scottish and British and we are proud to be part of the team that BOA send because it is a really good team and it is really well organised. Q58 Mr MacNeil: People from other nations might not know you are Scottish. You do not get a chance to show this pride in Scotland. Ms Robertson: Everybody in Scotland knows that I am Scottish. Mr Clegg: The most important thing here is, whether people like it or not, we are governed by the rules of the International Olympic Committee through the Olympic Charter. They are absolutely black and white on this issue. My understanding is only if we move from devolution to independence, will Scotland be entitled to have its own national committee. Professionally, I believe we are stronger collectively. I think Shirley would admit that without the other two Sarah's, not only was she unlikely to have won her gold medal she may not even have been represented at the Games. Exactly the same can be said for Catherine Granger in the women's pair who took a silver medal in the rowing event. I believe that the collective interest of high performance sport across the United Kingdom is much stronger, working as one, and only by working collectively as one with a common goal, Olympic success, will we achieve fourth place in the medal table in 2012. It will require everyone to put whatever baggage they are carrying behind them and focus on supporting our athletes. The one thing I would love to see is more Scottish athletes in the British team and more Scottish athletes winning medals. I think that is a challenge for Sport Scotland and for the athletes of Scotland and if they can achieve that I think that will be a wonderful goal, and the whole of the British team would be a richer place for it. Q59 Mr McGovern: I want to ask a supplementary question, I agree with Shirley, I am entirely comfortable with the concept of a British team and I must commend Shirley for mentioning the facilities in Dundee. How do you square that circle with the football thing where the IOC are saying they want one team to represent Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and that team will either be England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland? Mr Clegg: The IOC have not said that. It is entirely within the gift of the British Olympic Association to decide whether we enter a team of athletes for any of the 26 sports within the programme. Obviously there has been a historical situation with football, though we have entered successfully previous Olympic football competitions in decades gone. We are working with the Football Association because with the agreement of the other home country associations they represent the interests of football on the National Olympic Committee to try and find a solution to this problem. Could I say the BOA will not support a position which in any way compromises the integrity of the home country associations affiliation to FIFA. We have received assurances from the President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, that if we do enter a team for the Olympic Games it will not compromise that integrity. Having achieved that degree of assurance I think the onus is now on us and on the four home country football associations to find a situation that is acceptable to everyone that will not deprive talented young football players, from whichever part of the United Kingdom they come from, competing in the world's greatest event in our home shores here in London in 2012. There are hurdles to overcome, I am confident we can overcome those and we can put together a team which will be a credit to the whole of the United Kingdom. Q60 Mr Davidson: I think it is worthwhile maybe just mentioning the vast majority in this Committee support the continuation of a British team and want to see neither a Scottish team which is like the Cayman Islands which, if I remember correctly, is an overseas territory - I do not think any of us would want Scotland to have that status - nor do we want Scotland merged into a grand EU team, perish the thought. I had not heard that before but I can assure you that we will hear it again. Can I just come back to the points that you were making before this about boosting sport in general which is why a lot of people like myself supported the idea of a London bid. What I am not clear about is how you are working with people like the local authorities and business to try and boost the funding which goes into grass roots sport. While I accept you do not have the responsibility for that, you do have Olympics the brand which has to be immensely powerful in terms of generating financial support for areas like my own where sporting facilities are partly under-used by working class youngsters and partly simply not working. Mr Clegg: I can assure you that there is a lot of work in progress at this moment in time because there are a lot of agencies involved in delivering grass roots sport and education programmes around sport. What you would see is a very much joined-up approach to this with LOCOG, ourselves, DfES, youth sports trusts, the home country sports councils, DCMS, everyone working collectively to ensure we grasp this wonderful opportunity, probably once in a lifetime opportunity, to make sure we can push the case for sport within the social agenda. We will be judged by the outcomes of that in 2012 and for decades thereafter, but it is still fairly early days at the moment and I can assure you there is a lot of work in progress to make sure we capitalise on this opportunity. Q61 Mr Davidson: Are you happy that it is not going to be dissipated amongst the alphabet soup organisations? I can see why everybody would want to be involved in this because it is the biggest show in town, but how do you balance the detail involved while at the same time making sure that there is a main driver? Mr Clegg: That is challenging and that is one of the issues that the working group is looking at at the moment. We have to make sure that the Olympic Games can touch every youngster in the United Kingdom in some way, whether it is through educational programmes, whether it is in terms of taking up sport, whether it is experiencing new sport, whether it is talent identification programmes that will identify people who at the moment do not realise they have got latent talent in a particular sport. I think there are all sorts of opportunities, there are all sorts of work strands which are being developed at the moment with outputs likely to appear fairly early in the New Year. Mr Lee: There is one other element to this, which is the private sector. Simon is rightly identifying the work that is coming together to make a case for more investment in grass roots sports and I think it is important the agencies have the responsibility to lead on that. One of the opportunities which comes out from LOCOG and the 2012 Games is that we have to raise in the region of over £500 million from the private sector to act as sponsors to the event. Some major proportion of hat will be about helping to finance literally the running of the Games but I think there could be some interesting developments in terms of a relationship with the corporate sponsor which links to them, for example, investing in grass roots sport. It is good for them, it is good for us, it is good for grass roots sport. We know that some of the sponsors who are interested in working with us already before we have even gone out to market - which we probably will not do until the middle part of next year - are new sponsors to sport. They are not people who have currently got investment in existing sports programmes. It has not been much talked about but I think potentially if we do the right deals and we know the sponsors themselves, they want leverage into schools and into youth and community, that could be a source of additional funding into British sport. Q62 Mr Davidson: If there is a time line for that process when should we be able to see some progress and what are the things we ought to be saying to the Scottish Executive when we meet them: "Are you doing X by such and such a date?" Mr Lee: You mean in terms of the public funding? Q63 Mr Davidson: Yes, additional public and attracting private funding and getting this melange of alphabet organisations together. Are there certain things you are aiming for? We look at Scotland, obviously there will be regions of England doing the same thing, we are interested in seeing whether or not Scotland is ahead of them or behind them. Are there certain things we ought to be looking for happening by a certain date? Mr Lee: On the private sector side I am describing something that LOCOG is going to deal with directly, these are primary relationships with potential sponsors. Just because the Games are coming, there are potentially all sorts of new players in the market place and attracting those and engaging those is something that people need to consider. On the private sector side, the big pot I am describing, the lead responsibility is categorically with LOCOG on that. On the public side, Simon? Mr Clegg: On the public sector side all I can assure you at the moment is the relevant agencies are engaged in the process and we are confident that they will work together collectively to deliver a programme which will be deliverable across the whole of the UK. Mike is absolutely right, we need to ensure the rights that LOCOG own are protected because it is those rights that will generate the money that will be needed to stage the Games. Only once the commercial sector has come on board with LOCOG will there then fall out of that the opportunities for getting those commercial sponsors involved with grass roots opportunities. We must not allow other parties who are not LOCOG sponsors to be running Olympic related programmes because that would be very damaging to LOCOG and, quite frankly, if there is an shortfall in the income they can generate then it will be the public purse that will be picking it up. Q64 Mr Walker: Picking up what Ian said, how are we going to stop this from becoming a jamboree for the rich, famous and powerful? All this is happening in London, the venues are in London and we all know what happens, you have special motorway lanes for the new aristocracy to arrive unencumbered by traffic to these facilities. What about Ian's working class kids, how are they going to get to the Olympic facilities? Who is going to pay for their travel? Who is going to pay for their tickets? I am lucky, I will have the Olympics in Broxbourne and I am sure provision will be made, but how will provision be made for his constituents? This is very important, this is the country's Olympics, it is not just for the rich but for those who would otherwise have no chance of getting near a venue or this wonderful celebration of sport. Mr Lee: I think the primary focus for us has been on ticket pricing. In fact, of all the five bidding cities that competed for 2012 we have the best and fairest set of ticket proposals, and that means the majority of the tickets are under £30. You have to remember our aim and plan is to ensure that every venue is full. We will deploy all ticketing and marketing strategies that we need to make sure that happens. Also, every ticket with it will have free travel across London. So an investment in a ticket gives you a right to public transport across London for whatever the ticket applies to on the particular day. Are we saying there is a commitment at the moment to provide travel subsidies directly from the LOCOG across the UK, the answer is no. Will there be rail companies, bus companies and all sorts of other people interested in being engaged and driving traffic and driving business, in providing those sorts of discounted fares, I think absolutely. All I can say is there will be tickets available at every range. It will not be a Games - and Seb Coe has made this absolutely clear - for the rich and famous. The Olympic families have certain demands, rightly so, in terms of how they are protected and how they are able to travel, particularly the athletes. Our intention, and Seb has made this clear is that this will be a celebration for the whole of the UK. Whether it is in the individual venues, in the cultural festivals, in the large screens in town hall squares, whether it is through the volunteer programme, this is a Games for the whole of the nation of this country. Q65 Chairman: Is there any provision - obviously there are children and families who will not be able to afford to buy a ticket - to subsidise those families of those children? Mr Lee: We are not allowed under the terms of the agreement with the IOC to directly provide subsidised tickets. What we can do, and it is something we have discussed, for example with the GLA, is work with them where they are able to buy certain allocations that they can use in their own communities. We are not saying that we will provide large numbers of individually subsidised tickets but we can work with local authorities and other partners to provide them with an allocation that they can use in their own area. Q66 Mr Davidson: Can I clarify: will an area like Glasgow be regarded as a partner in that regard? If tickets go on sale a month before and you have to be there in person then clearly travelling up and down twice is going to be unduly expensive. Will people in my area have the same opportunity to buy tickets as anyone else? Mr Lee: Absolutely. They will be available, open sale, on the Internet by all the usual means. If one is interested in exploring the idea that people may be able to have a certain allocation they can use in their own communities, it is something the Nations and Regions Group ought to discuss and we will happily make sure it is discussed there. Q67 Mr Walker: We have under-privileged people across the country, it is not just the cost of the ticket, it is travel and accommodation costs. I think we could have you back for a whole session on how some of the poorest people in our society are going to be able to take part in this because that is something which really worries me. We are going to have people being required to pay hundreds of pounds for hotels that normally cost tens of pounds. We are going to have every form of price gouging and actually the most vulnerable in our society, the people who get the least treats, the least days out are going to totally miss out on this. I am not having a go at you but it is going to be a stain on this country if people in Ian's constituency, the working class in my constituency, and of Members here, have no chance of getting to see this. Sure, they can afford a ticket perhaps for £25 but the travelling and accommodation puts it way out of their reach and that will be a tragedy. Mr Clegg: There are two things to say, one is that I suspect there will be all sorts of interesting travel schemes which will come up in the Games. The second thing is to give you some assurance on a gouging of prices on hotels, Sara, along with colleagues within LOCOG, has worked very hard over the last several months to conclude a whole series of deals with all the major hotel chains in London so that in fact we have not only those rooms provided for the Olympics for use during the Games by people who have tickets and will be attending the events but at an agreed price formula. The reason that we have done that, and it has never been done before by a bidding city ahead of a decision by the IOC, is because of the exact experience in Athens and other previous host cities where there is no doubt about it that on a shortage of accommodation prices were sent through the roof and there was exploitation going across the market place. I think Athens was probably the worst example in recent times. London has taken an unprecedented step in reaching a whole series of contractual agreements with hotels to ensure that cannot happen under the legal binding contracts we have fixed with over 40,000 hotel rooms and rising across the capital. Mr Walker: That is fabulous news but these people - and I am sorry to labour the point - even if it was going to be £150 and they had reduced it to £80, what you have got to understand is that for the people out there with very little or no disposal income actually some provision somewhere needs to be made within this whole jamboree to ensure that a few people, perhaps more than a few, get a chance to do something which is otherwise going to be totally out of their reach. I know every Member of Parliament will work with you to identify deserving cases and causes in their constituencies and would love to work with you on achieving that. Q68 Chairman: If you need any support from a Member, we understand you do not have a massive budget and you are constrained but you have contacts with the Scottish Executive, regional governments and local government and I am sure they will all play their part, we will all play our part to ensure that people in communities feel they are participating in these Olympic Games. Mr Clegg: There are nine and a half million tickets in the course of an Olympic Games, by the way. The commitment from LOCOG is to ensure that the pricing structure we put in place, agreed with the IOC, will make sure that everybody has an opportunity to attend one of those venues. Nine and a half million tickets are not normally sold out and we will make sure they are available in as fair and open a way and at prices that people can afford. Ms Friend: We should not also forget that after the Olympic Games comes the Paralympic Games and the ticket pricing is even at a lower level again because traditionally there has been a problem filling some of the stadia during the Paralympic Games which is second only to the Olympic Games in terms of a celebration of a sporting festival. I believe I am right in saying there will be a vast allocation of tickets in and around the £10 and below mark for the Paralympics. Chairman: Can I thank you for your attendance this afternoon. I am sure your evidence will be very helpful to the Committee Members and the people of Scotland. Mr Walker: And Broxbourne too. Q69 Chairman: Do you wish to say anything on the subject we have not covered? Mr Clegg: No. Thank you for the opportunity that you have given us today to meet and speak with you. I think this is a fantastic opportunity and the challenge for all of us involved in the organising committee is to make sure that as many people in our country grasp this once in a lifetime opportunity as possible. Chairman: Once again, thank you. |