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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 104-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Tuesday 4 December 2007 LORD COE, MR PAUL DEIGHTON, MR JOHN ARMITT and MR DAVID HIGGINS LORD MOYNIHAN, MR SIMON CLEGG and MR PHIL LANE Evidence heard in Public Questions 81 - 251
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 4 December 2007 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Paul Farrelly Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Rosemary McKenna Mr Adrian Sanders Helen Southworth
________________ Memorandum submitted by London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Lord Coe, a Member of the House of Lords, Chair, and Mr Paul Deighton, Chief Executive Officer, London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, and Mr John Armitt, Chairman, and Mr David Higgins, Chief Executive, Olympic Delivery Authority, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning. This is a further session of the Committee's examination of preparations for the London 2012 Games, and we are pleased to welcome this morning the Chairman and Chief Executive of LOCOG, Lord Coe and Paul Deighton, and the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority, John Armitt and David Higgins. Adrian Sanders is going to start. Q81 Mr Sanders: We are now almost a third of the way from winning the bid in 2005 to the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. Are you where you intended to be at this stage in the proceedings? Lord Coe: Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to bring you up to speed with all these issues. The bold answer to that is yes. We have had the International Olympic Committee to London on three separate occasions, a fourth for the Paralympics, and on each one of those occasions, both as a co-ordination committee and as a review committee, a smaller group of executive officers, we have had four very clean bills of health. That is not said with a vestige of complacency because, as you will be fully aware, this is a very complex project but at both LOCOG, and I know John Armitt would echo these sentiments, and at the ODA we work extremely closely together and we are exactly where we would want to be and, if I may so, probably marginally ahead. Q82 Mr Sanders: Do you see any risks at all to your timetable? Lord Coe: As I said, this is the most complex piece of project management that any city undertakes. There will be challenges right the way through to the opening ceremony, but the quality of the people in both the teams and the forensic detail and planning four years, eight months away from the opening ceremony I think will stand us in very good stead, but, of course, we go forward with our eyes wide open. This is complex. Q83 Mr Sanders: Beijing will obviously be the perfect opportunity to see where things go right or go wrong. Is there anything in particular that each of you will be looking at? Lord Coe: I will leave that with the Chief Executive. Mr Deighton: From LOCOG's point of view there are actually two formal programmes to make sure we get the most out of the learning opportunities in Beijing: what we call a secondee programme, where we will have something like 25, 26 people who go and work in Beijing for three months or so doing the jobs they will then do in London, so that is a very precise experience, and obviously we target the jobs which are most directly transferable to what happens in London; and then at Games time itself we will have what is described as an observer programme for about 140 people, is the current plan, two-thirds of whom will come from the organising committee with a third coming from our various partners who are also involved in delivery, such as TfL, the GLA, DCMS the ODA, et cetera, and that comprises a range of programmes covering arrivals and departures, security, transport - all the technical, functional, operational things you need to do in a games - so we can download directly the Beijing experience. We will go into Beijing with operational manuals of here are the things we want to observe and learn, we will come back with that learning experience and that will provide the basis for the next level of operational planning at the end of 2008 beginning of 2009. So the Beijing experience is not just turning up and looking around and saying, "Is not this big and interesting?", it is very specific, very operational and it is part of the building block which takes us from a high level of strategic planning into more day-to-day operational planning. It is very important for us. Q84 Mr Sanders: What area in particular are you going to look at? Lord Coe: When I say "operational areas", it is really about running big events. We are looking at each of the sports events themselves, how those are run, because, of course, the Olympic Games is typically in each sport the biggest and most complex event for that sport in terms of numbers - the numbers of media involved, the amount of TV and press coverage - so watching how all those things interact and the challenges, the scale that those interdependencies create are really what we are trying to understand and accomplish. Q85 Mr Sanders: I will ask down the line of others? Mr Armitt: As far as we are concerned, we have taken on board the experience of not only Beijing but Sydney and Athens in terms of the design of stadia and the needs of the athletes, because by the time of Beijing to a large extent we will have largely completed the overall design concepts of the main stadia. There is then the operational aspect of those stadia, which Paul has just talked about, and, again, we will want to observe the degree of what is called the overlay, which is essentially the installations which LOCOG put in place on top of our permanent facilities. Again, we have already been to Beijing and looked at that and we draw all the time upon the experience of other games, not just Beijing, to understand the needs of athletes, how it works from an operational point of view, so that in designing the stadia, which we are making progress on now, we have got that experience understood, but clearly the most recent one is always worth looking at as well to see what happens on the ground and so, equally, we will have our staff on the ground during the Beijing Games. Q86 Mr Sanders: Maybe you can reassure me. It is just an observation. We were very fortunate to go to Athens and see the fantastic campus there of facilities that now lies pretty much empty and certainly not properly used. It sounds to me like you are falling into the same trap of focusing everything on the three or four weeks of the two games rather than actually looking at: let us build something and the games can fit into it. What we are talking about here is something that is going to cost us lots of money - at the moment it is costing us now and will cost us every year up to the games - and it will last for many, many years after the games, so, in my view, you should be focusing on the athletes and the event fitting in to a much wider plan. Lord Coe: If I may say so, I was in Athens working, obviously, with the bid team. I think that a great chunk of our thinking going forward is based on the Athens experience. I am vice-president of my international federation. I was there just a year ago for a World Cup in that same stadium and, you are right, there are large parts of that stadium and that Olympic park that are now struggling for, not a day-to-day existence, but even to find one or two events per year. All our thinking in terms of design of facilities is predicated on what we use them for afterwards. The world has changed - we know this from the Olympic movement, we know this from the bidding process - and leaving facilities in a community that, frankly, cannot use them in any credible way afterwards is not what this games is about. We went to Singapore to bid for 16 days of spectacular sport but what nudged us across the line, in my view, was the International Olympic Committee's recognition that the regeneration and the solid legacy that we recognise that a games has to leave was very much at the centre of our thinking, and I think we have demonstrated that in pretty much everything that we have done since we came back from Singapore, both in the delivery of our programmes at LOCOG and through the Olympic Delivery Authority. Q87 Mr Sanders: Can I come back to Mr Armitt and ask that question again? What are you going to be looking at in Beijing in relation to what you can learn for London 2012 and beyond? Mr Armitt: I think to a certain extent you should not assume that what Beijing sees as its future requirements, picking up your point about legacy, and ours are necessarily the same. The point has just been made that every single time we look at a venue we are looking at what is that venue going to be used for in the future or at the legacy expectations for the future as much as for the games and it is under constant discussion: how do we think about legacy, how do we reflect what is needed for that stadia, how can we best use it in the future to ensure that it does not become a white elephant but at same time meets the needs of the games? The stadium we have now essentially fixed the design of in terms of 80,000, reducing to 25,000 after the games. At the velodrome we have got the basic concept design agreed and fixed and the aquatic centre similarly, and so we have made a lot of progress on those three very large facilities. To be frank, I would not see us changing those designs as a consequence of Beijing in the overall concept. What we will see in Beijing is the movement of people in and out of the stadium, the positioning of turnstiles, entrances, all these sort of detailed issues which we can pick up in Beijing and then bring back and reflect on what we have designed and see whether there is tweaking which needs to be made, but I would not see us changing our basic concepts as a consequence of Beijing. It is very much looking at how it works in operation. Q88 Mr Sanders: A final question to yourself. We know that one of your predecessors resigned, citing frustration at the political environment. I wonder, coming from Network Rail, do you find the political environment more or less marked? Mr Armitt: Everybody says, "How do I find it?", and I always answer that this is more political than Network Rail. I thought the railways were political; the Olympics are considerably more political. Q89 Paul Farrelly: I want to ask a few questions about your income and sponsorship. Before that, just picking up on the previous points and the way the bid was won on participation and regeneration. This is a point that I made with you, Lord Coe, last week on our visit and I have made with Mr Deighton when we have met and in front of the Committee. I do not get any sense when I travel around the London Boroughs that are going to host these Olympics of any expectation at all so far. Driving across Hackney, for instance, it would be wonderful to have "The Olympic Borough of Hackney", "The Olympic Borough of Newham", and clear road signage. It is a very big building site but very discreet; there is no trumpeting of the fact that the Olympics is going to be there. Then, if you get into schools, which is where we had lots of pictures of children where you won the bid, under-privileged East End children - I have made this point before - one of the easiest things, surely, with your power for sponsorship, would be to identify all those schools in those inner city London boroughs that do not have a single blade of grass and make sure the legacy starts now, that at the very least they get a rubberised surface where they can actually participate in sport, because at the moment it is pretty woeful. Lord Coe: I spend a lot of time in schools the length and breadth of this country and we have a very clear programme of engagement in London, particularly in the London Boroughs but more broadly. I actually slightly disagree. I see a lot of activity going on in schools both in driving in some of the educational, the cultural and the sporting values of the Olympic Games. We are still five years away and, as you know from your visit the other day, we are dealing with a huge building site at the moment and so issues of signage and colourways and all the other things will take place, but we are also one year away from a preceding Olympic Games. I think in all those areas, yes, of course, you are right, it is very important that we drive those values in those boroughs. I witness things that are happening on the ground, both in London boroughs and more broadly throughout the UK, that I know simply would not be happening had we come back empty handed from Singapore, but, you are right, we need to continue to make sure that people understand what we are doing, particularly the participation, not just in sport but through the cultural platforms that we have, the issues of regeneration are all properly understood, and that is one of the challenges going forward, to communicate that properly. Q90 Paul Farrelly: Given that participation was a fundamental part of the way you pitched the bid and won the bid, who should be in the driving seat and making sure that that is delivered from now? Who should co-ordinate the activities? Lord Coe: I think we have to look at this as two very clear and different strands of sport. You have the elite level programme. We have an ambitious target set by the British Olympic Association, by UK Sport, of a fourth place in the medals table and a second, hopefully first, place in the Paralympics medals table. The funding that has come through into elite level sport is now unprecedented. I was Chairman of the Sports Council back in the mid eighties. I had a budget available to me of 41.5 million that was supposed to deal with participation, elite level funding and ability provision, so we are in a completely different landscape. The elite level project work is going extremely well. The broader implication of participation, which is very clearly what we talked about in Singapore, is driven ostensibly by government, the agencies for sport, Sport England, and through any number of local authority initiatives as well. We should not overlook the impact that local authorities have on this programme. Let us be clear about what we can do and what we are doing as a local organising committee. I think we see our role here as having provided the inspiration and, frankly, the opportunity. The broader driving of participation into sport is clearly those sporting agencies at arms' length from government, and some autonomous, that need coherent and structured programmes going forward. For instance, in the last year as an organising committee, we have secured a road show that took the Olympics message and sport into 27 different venues, not just simply exciting youngsters to pick up sport but providing aptitude testing. Waltham Forest was a very good example. We took a road show there where we had some of our top rowing coaches identifying young talent in the local community. We can do that. We can use the brand in any number of creative ways to drive this issue as well, but it is effectively as an organisation inspiration and opportunity. We look to government and Sport England and those agencies out there to actually build on that inspiration. Q91 Paul Farrelly: One final question on this point before I move on to sponsorship, Chairman. Clearly there are lots of quangos involved in sport - there is yourselves now tasked with the Olympics, the Department for Education, Culture, Media and Sport is responsible for sport - but at the bottom level, to make sure this works for that part of London at the bottom, is there an effective leaders group at the local authorities that you deal with day in day out? Lord Coe: Let me make just one point clear. I think we see ourselves very differently from being a quango, but, yes, there are structures now developing, four and a half, five years out, that I think will deliver and will drive this and that is very clear and that needs to be the case. We have to be very open about this. The participation legacy is not simply going to fall into our laps because we have the inspiration and the opportunity of an Olympic Games. You will need to have properly structured programmes, properly resourced, to make sure that we can tap into all that. The history of Olympic Games providing a once and for all increase in participation is not good unless that planning and that thinking is taking place now. Barcelona was good example. In Barcelona, before the games, something like 20,000 people in the city were attached to sports clubs, were regular members of sports clubs. That figure has now risen to nearly 200,000, but that did not take place simply because the games came to Barcelona. There was some serious thinking behind that to go on driving that, and that is what is important. Q92 Paul Farrelly: Can I just come to questions regarding LOCOG's income. You initially, if I remember, saw expressions of interest from tier one sponsors in six categories. How many do you expect now and how many have you signed up? Lord Coe: I am going to ask our Chief Executive to take you through our income projections. Mr Deighton: Let me tell you where we are on sponsorship. Our target for sponsorship is £650 million. We have approximately 170 million already raised from three existing sponsors that have come on board - that is Lloyd's, TSB, EDF and Adidas. In five minutes we will be announcing another one, a tier two sponsor, Deloittes, in the professional services category. We have brought forward that particular tier two category because the services and value in kind they offer us are actually valuable us now, at this stage in our development, so it was to our advantage to secure that relationship now. We expect to complete another three sponsorships by March this year, two tier one and one tier two. So, by March this year, I would anticipate something like, let us say, 40% of our total already raised - that is both in cash and in value in kind. As you will understand, with some of the sponsorship arrangements some people give us cash, some give us the things that we need to put on the games. Q93 Paul Farrelly: In terms of numbers of tier one sponsors you expect, would that make it seven? Mr Deighton: We would have---. No, by March I would expect us to have five tier one and two tier two. Q94 Paul Farrelly: But in total over the--- Mr Deighton: By the time we have finished, the maximum number of tier one sponsors we have stipulated is ten, and we do it that way because part of the attraction of being a tier one sponsor is a degree of exclusivity, so you cannot have too many of them. My expectation, frankly, is there will be six or seven. What determines how many tier one sponsors there are is, frankly, how many people are prepared to pay the threshold price of entry, which is £40 million. So, I would have ten if I could get ten people to pay £40 million or more. My expectation is there will be another one or two after the deals we have done up to March. Q95 Paul Farrelly: Was not the threshold 50 million? Mr Deighton: No, I think the expectation was that, on average, the tier one partners would pay 50, and, as you can tell, if I have done three and got 170, we are exceeding that. The entry price is 40, so let us call the average 50. It is really set by the market essentially. Obviously our objectives is to maximise income so we can put on the spectacular games we are planning and the way we approach it is to take a category, talk to the participants in that industry, get them as excited as possible about what an association with the games can do for their business, how it can improve sales, get their customers excited, what it can do for their colleagues, their own workforce, also how it can motivate them, how effective a platform it can be for their various community initiatives, and then to essentially have a competitive auction where they bid for the right to be our sponsor. So, ultimately, the market determines the price. We do it in a way to maximise the return that we can get from the level of interest that we generate. Q96 Paul Farrelly: As things stand, if you get your seven tier one sponsorships you are expecting a minimum of 330 million and that might rise to 450 if you get ten? Mr Deighton: From the tier ones, yes, and then the rest are filled in by the tier two and tier three. The tier two sponsors threshold entry price is 20 million and then tier three, in the main, are suppliers who will provide us with goods and services in the ten to 20 million pound price bracket. So, what we are doing at the moment is to identify what it is we require to stage the games in terms of goods and services and concentrating those into groups which allow us to go to certain companies and say, "Okay, here is an opportunity for you to essentially provide us with those goods and services in return for which you get a supplier designation as a supporter of the games." Q97 Paul Farrelly: Do you how much Beijing has raised in sponsorship? Mr Deighton: Yes. I do not have an exact number, but it is something like a billion and a half dollars. That would translate on a simple exchange rate to 750, so a little bit above our target. There are two very significant differences in the case of Beijing. The most significant one is nearly all the sponsors are state-owned companies, so they do not quite go through the same process of persuasion as ours do, and, secondly, of course it is a significantly larger economy. Q98 Paul Farrelly: There was some concern - UK Sport is looking to raise its own money - that you might be fishing in the same pond, which might make it more difficult for one or the other. Sue Campbell, after discussions with you, said she had listened and respectfully worked in partnership with you and that you, LOCOG, were now very supportive of the direction that UK Sport are taking. Is that accurate? Mr Deighton: Yes, we work very closely with UK Sport. You are absolutely right, there is clearly the potential for sponsors to be confused in these related opportunities and, therefore, UK Sport has been extremely helpful in consulting us every step of the way. In fact I think they are currently interviewing prospective advisers to help them with this task, and one of my staff members is sitting on that panel to make sure that the terms of reference for those advisers and the on-going process for that adviser is managed in a way to ensure that there is no competition in the market place which could damage our respective fund-raising efforts. Q99 Chairman: On that particular point, you attach great significance to exclusivity of your top level sponsors. Might that exclusivity be diminished if UK Sport were to sign up a sponsor in the same area as one of your tier one sponsors? Mr Deighton: Only if the relationship with UK Sport or, frankly, anybody else who was looking for those sponsors, gave the sponsor an association with London 2012. Q100 Chairman: So the sponsor of UK Sport is not going to be able to say that they are associated with London 2012? Mr Deighton: No. Q101 Chairman: That might make it harder to attract a sponsor. Mr Deighton: The challenge for UK Sport, in my view (and this is where the adviser will be working very hard) will be to define precisely what it is they are effectively selling to the sponsor. Q102 Chairman: Is it not a little bit strange? Essentially they are sponsoring our ambition to rise up the medal table to fourth in 2012 and yet they are not allowed to talk about that. Mr Deighton: They are allowed to talk about the development of the lead athletes but not in the context of London 2012; and that is why this is a challenging proposition, I agree. Q103 Paul Farrelly: Inscrutability might be allowed in some measure still in China, but events in politics continue to demonstrate the importance of transparency, particularly with big, high profile and very political projects such as this. It would be remiss of me not to ask a couple of questions at least to give you the opportunity to put your views on record about the recent Dispatches programme on Channel 4. Mr Deighton first, could you tell the Committee why it took a Freedom of Information Act request by Dispatches to get you to disclose your accounts to them? Mr Deighton: It did not. The accounts that were disclosed to them were ones which had not even been approved by our board. I think what they particularly wanted was executive salaries. Those executive salaries were in the accounts. The accounts had not yet been approved by our board. As soon as they were approved by our board they were released for everybody to have a look at. I think that was merely a timing issue. Q104 Paul Farrelly: It was a red herring. You will be forthcoming. Whichever way you are constituted, you are seen as a public body. Mr Deighton: As I hope comes across when I talk about our revenue raising, and it is quite a sensitive subject because, of course, there is some information in there, if I am too granular, which is quite useful to the people who we are trying to be sponsors, and, as I hope has come across, our objective is to be as transparent as we possibly can be without compromising our commercial objectives, and we absolutely accept that that is the position that we hold, as stewards. I see us effectively as stewards of the games on behalf of the UK public, and that is the way we plan to behave. Q105 Paul Farrelly: Lord Coe, my briefing notes here, the first paragraph talks about your phenomenal sporting achievements, the second your considerable political achievements and the third mentions that you are a controlling shareholder in the Complete Leisure Group Plc, and, of course, that relationship was the subject of the Dispatches programme as well. I think in the programme they made reference to a draft fund raising prospectus for the Complete Leisure Group which contained a reference to the intention to cement a strategic business relationship which would involve consultancy payments with Anschutz Entertainment Group, which, of course, owns the Dome, which an Olympic site. Could you tell us a bit more about that intended relationship and what has come of it? Lord Coe: Yes, very happily. It is a relationship that never actually took place. It was a series of thinking that we had in the development of the company and we never actually went down that road - so it is as simple as that - and that was a draft document. Q106 Paul Farrelly: Because there could be the perception of a conflict of interest with your role as Chairman of LOCOG if that sort of relationship were to be intended or cemented by your private business interests. Lord Coe: Yes, it is a relationship that was not pursued. Q107 Paul Farrelly: Did you declare those intentions to the board of LOCOG in the usual and acceptable fashion? Lord Coe: Absolutely, and also to DCMS and to the International Olympic Committee. Q108 Paul Farrelly: As things stand, because you did not get the opportunity or did not comment on the programme, you can categorically say you have no business relationships via your companies or associates that would lead to any conflict of interest with your current position as the Chairman of LOCOG. Lord Coe: Absolutely, yes. Q109 Philip Davies: Do we take it from the answers that you have given that your income from sponsorship is on target to where you expected it to be at this stage? Mr Deighton: Yes. Of course the last £200 million is likely to be more difficult to raise than the first 200 million. The best benchmark I can give is that, as I have already said, we will, before the Beijing games, have a minimum of seven sponsorship contracts fully signed. As far as I am aware, no previous Olympic Games has ever had one contract signed before the previous edition of the games; so, in terms of getting it done fast, we are considerably ahead of where anybody has ever been before and that offers, I think, a couple of important advantages. One is that the sponsors we are putting in place really do have a significant amount of time to get the most out of their investment, which is obviously a very good thing for them, but it is also a very good thing for us because they are putting in place what we describe as activation plans which involve community investment, involve cultural investments, involve things that we all want to happen, and they have the time and money to do that effectively. So, having the sponsors in place early means they can have very significant, effective activation strategies. The second reason it is very helpful to have things in place early is that there is a lot of detail that needs to go into what I would describe as the secondary and tertiary levels of sponsorship, and because when we get to 2009/2010 we will still not be trying to land the big sponsorships, we can really focus on the detail in the smaller sponsorships and you can save a significant amount of money and make the games significantly more efficient if you have been able to give those secondary and tertiary sponsorships that kind of attention. So getting things done early is not just nice because it demonstrates commercial momentum, it gives you some real practical advantages as well which will translate into benefits for us. Q110 Philip Davies: What is your assessment of where public opinion is on the Olympic Games and how things have been going up to the present? Lord Coe: We have a 76% approval rating which, given the predominant profession in this building, I think is probably a pretty reasonable figure to be working on. Q111 Philip Davies: Do you not think that the public have any reservations at all about the way that the preparations for the Olympics have been going? Lord Coe: No, I think the real challenge going forward is to be open and transparent and very clear about what it is we are doing and why we are doing it, when we will be doing it and making sure, for instance, through our engagement programmes, through Nations and Regions, which is a structure that affects all your constituencies and has moves and shakers in any number of spheres helping us drive local opportunities, that we use that as the vehicle as well. Actually we have had levels of approval for the project and the overall vision that have varied very little certainly since the bidding process started. Q112 Philip Davies: Is there not a danger that when you go round, because it is your job and therefore all you see is all the activity that is going on, you get a slightly false view of everybody's enthusiasm for it? Has anybody said to you what the straw poll that I asked before here has said to me about the Olympics, which is that as far as they could tell it was costing an absolute fortune and the biggest thing they could remember was that an astronomical amount of money had been spent on a logo? Lord Coe: No, those are not the kind of conversations I have, and actually going around various parts of the country witnessing all the things that are happening on the ground is not a bad way to start the day. We have very grown up discussions with all sorts of community groups. We have probably spoken to 650 different organisations the length and breadth of this country. We know there is a huge challenge ahead to make this a project that is as relevant to young people in the north of Scotland as it is in Cornwall and, as I said a few moments ago, what I am witnessing on the ground is frankly staggering and I am witnessing it in all parts of the country. I went to Belfast just a few weeks ago where, during the bidding process, there was discussion about having a centre of gymnastics excellence. I went to a club where they were working on mattresses and equipment which probably would not have been out of place in the average gym in the 1950s. This is a club that had coached to Commonwealth Games standard 20 different competitors. Two weeks ago I went to open a new centre that simply would not have been there had the games gone somewhere else, and I see this all the time, both at local and at national level. So I am satisfied that the task that we set ourselves in Singapore, which was to provide the once in a lifetime opportunity to inspire and then provide that opportunity, is coming together very well. Q113 Philip Davies: We are looking forward to welcoming you in Shipley as well. Out of those 650 groups, how many thought that the money spent on the logo was well spent? Lord Coe: The logo is a hardworking logo. It was absolutely designed to connect with young people. It was designed also to confront some of the challenges going forward. You know as well as I do that it is harder every year to engage young people, particularly in sport. The motivations that probably got most of the content of this room into sport have dramatically altered. The average age of people watching Olympic sport has risen quite dramatically in the last ten, 12, 15 years. We have to be very creative, we have to be very different in our approach and for some we knew that this would be a challenge, but this is going to be a hardworking brand and, if you look at the way that our partners that Paul Deighton spoke about a few moments are now enshrined creatively in their own marketing programmes, the way that we are working together with the London boroughs particularly to make sure that this has a really important focus, this is coming together extremely well. Philip Davies: I will take that as being that not many have said it was money well spent. Q114 Chairman: Can we turn quickly to the ODA in terms of your funding. Obviously a significant proportion of that is intended to come from the Lottery. Revenue from the Lottery has begun to turn down in comparison to previous years. If that were to continue, do you have contingency plan? Mr Armitt: At the end of the day the funding which comes to the ODA is funding which is organised one way or another by government. The Government would deal with that if that were to be an issue. I think all we could say in response to your comment on the Lottery is what the Lottery themselves said in the newspaper reports, which was that they were confident that, with the future games and the changes which they are bringing in, they will be able to meet the obligations which they have met in terms of the amount of funding they will make available for funding the games. Q115 Chairman: If it turned out they could not, that would be the Government's problem? Mr Armitt: As I say, as the ODA we are not responsible for raising the funds which we need; they are organised by government. Q116 Chairman: The Olympic Lottery Distributor has said that you should repay lottery grant if it creates or enhances assets. Can you perhaps clarify how and when that might happen? Mr Armitt: I will ask David to talk about that since he has been dealing with it. Mr Higgins: There is agreement that surplus profits from land sales that the LDA own would go to repay the Lottery; so that is what that refers to. Q117 Chairman: I had understood this was different to the requirement to enable repayment of lottery contributions via the LDA. This relates specifically to the assets rather than the land. Mr Higgins: If there are assets to be sold or realised, obviously the receipts will be dealt back to the funders, which will obviously include lottery. Q118 Chairman: The Olympic Lottery Distributor maintains a distinction between this requirement and the handling of the proceeds of land sales on the Olympic sites. Are you in discussion with the distributor about how exactly they envisage that there might be some repayment? Mr Higgins: Yes, we have a letter of offer, which we are in the process of accepting, that sets out all the terms. Q119 Chairman: Will you be making that public in due course? Mr Higgins: I am sure the details of that will be public, yes. Chairman: We now move on to the costing side. Mike Hall. Q120 Mr Hall: What is the purpose of the contingency? Mr Higgins: To manage risk. Q121 Mr Hall: Is that its sole purpose or is it just to cover up a very poor estimate in the beginning? Mr Higgins: No, contingencies are set up by Treasury as best practise. They vary in range from 30% to 60% on all sustained projects that the Government puts up for approval. You spend contingency to manage risk. Our biggest risk by far is time on this project. Q122 Mr Hall: There has been quite a lot said about the contingency. The former Secretary of State said it is around 2.8 billion. That is the programme contingency: 2.47 billion. As part of that there is a 500 million ODA contingency. What is the difference? Mr Higgins: The 500 is part of the 2.7. Q123 Mr Hall: If it is part of the original, why does it need to be allocated separately? Mr Higgins: Of the 2.7 the Secretary of State in March of this year said that 500 would be allocated to the ODA as part of her statement in March setting out the budget for the ODA. So, the ODA's overall budget of just over six billion includes that 500 million figure. Q124 Mr Hall: How much of the contingency have you drawn down so far? Mr Higgins: Five hundred of the 2.7 has been allocated to the ODA, not spent and not committed. Q125 Mr Hall: So you have not spent a penny of it yet. Mr Higgins: No, we have not spent the contingency. That is right. Q126 Mr Hall: Of all overall figure, the 2.474 billion, how much access to that have you got? Mr Higgins: The 500 is what we have access to. Q127 Mr Hall: Who authorises the spending of the rest of it then? Mr Higgins: That is set up by a committee which is chaired by the Chancellor. Q128 Mr Hall: We might look back on this hearing some time in the future. How much of this 2.474 billion are we actually going to spend? Mr Higgins: Sorry, the 2.7. Q129 Mr Hall: Sorry, the 2.747? Mr Higgins: Half a billion probably. Q130 Mr Hall: By the time we get to 2012 how much of that contingency would be spent? Mr Higgins: We said all along, we expect a substantial part of the contingency to be spent. A project of this complexity, this many projects with a fixed deadline, that is a reasonable figure to say. Clearly we want to minimise the expenditure of the contingency. Q131 Mr Hall: Are you confident we will not be asked to provide anything over and above the set level of this contingency? Mr Higgins: We are planning to work within the overall budget. Q132 Mr Hall: But are you confident? Mr Higgins: As confident as we can be. The biggest thing we can do is to hit milestones, which we have hit today. If you look two years ago you would think the biggest risks of the project would have been land consolidation, burying the power lines, vacant possession, planning, and those risks are much lower now but other risks emerge now that relate to delivery. Q133 Mr Hall: One final question, Chairman. If the contingency is as you describe it, why did you need a specific £500 million contingency out of the overall contingency? Mr Higgins: To address the early cost pressures that were identified as contracts were being let in the early stages. Q134 Mr Hall: You could have drawn that down from the original sum. If it is there to meet contingencies, surely you should have been able to draw that down if you needed it regardless? Mr Higgins: No, the way that the approvals work within government, if you let contracts such as enabling works, or power lines, or roads and bridges, you need to have a contingency set within that individual project, so you cannot let a project without having an adequate contingency base within the project. So it applied to the funds of this committee to allocate a contingency to be put within those individual sections; so early works, utilities, enabling works, bridges all have contingency built within the individual projects now. Q135 Paul Farrelly: Just to clarify one point. We have got the programme contingency, which might be called the kitchen sink contingency, and that lies above individual project contingency, which is already built into your budget? Mr Higgins: Correct. Q136 Paul Farrelly: So what is the underlying level of contingency that you have got in your budget before the programme contingency? Mr Higgins: It clearly includes the 500 allocated. The Secretary of State will be releasing within the next few weeks greater details on our budgets, which will clarify the break down of NUs and various transport and operating costs. Q137 Paul Farrelly: As you are working on this, can you tell us, underneath the programme contingency what the total amount is that you have already in your budget for contingency by individual projects? Mr Higgins: It varies on each project. Q138 Paul Farrelly: The total amount. Mr Higgins: We have not--- Q139 Paul Farrelly: Excluding the 2.7, including the 500 million. Mr Higgins: What, today? Q140 Paul Farrelly: It is a very simple question. You have got the programme contingency on top, the 2.7 - the 2.2 plus 500. Mr Higgins: The 2.2 plus the 500 million that is already put in project. Q141 Paul Farrelly: Let us put that to one side. Within your budget previously, adding up for each individual project (and the break down you say will come in the near future), what is the total amount that you already had in? Mr Higgins: That has never been set out. Q142 Paul Farrelly: I am asking you to set it out for us now? Mr Higgins: It is impossible to set that out because each project depends on the level of detail or design. What we can say is that within the 6.1 vision, which includes the 500 million, there is an adequate project contingency that just identifies the project costs. Q143 Paul Farrelly: I am asking you what that is in total. Mr Higgins: That will be released, the detail of that will be released, but it does include the 500 million allocated. Q144 Paul Farrelly: You are refusing to tell us this figure now. Mr Higgins: No, I am saying it includes the 500 million allocated by the Government. Q145 Paul Farrelly: I want the figure now so we can actually get an accurate--- Mr Higgins: I am confused as to what figure you are talking about. Q146 Paul Farrelly: Within your budgets for each individual project there is an individual contingency already before you lay the programme contingency on the top? Mr Higgins: That is right, yes. Q147 Paul Farrelly: I am asking you for that first figure. Mr Higgins: It is at least 500 million. Q148 Paul Farrelly: At least 500 million. Mr Higgins: That is right. Q149 Paul Farrelly: That is not giving me more than we already know, because you are including 500 million out of the programme. Mr Higgins: That is right. Q150 Paul Farrelly: So you are refusing to give the Committee a figure now? Mr Higgins: What is released to Parliament is the 500 million. Q151 Paul Farrelly: This is Parliament? Mr Higgins: That is right. As I said, the Secretary of State will make an announcement within two weeks to give further details in the budget, but what I can say is that it leaves this 500 million as allocated. Q152 Paul Farrelly: We would like to go away from this committee meeting hearing from you as witnesses a total figure that we can have in our mind in this budget for contingency? Mr Higgins: Which is the 2.2 unallocated and the 500 million. Q153 Paul Farrelly: And what else you have got in there already, which you are refusing to give us now. Mr Higgins: No, what I am setting out is what has been released by the Secretary of State as set out in the allocation of contingency. Q154 Paul Farrelly: Can you break down the 360 million figure for us that has already been released to you? Mr Higgins: The details of that will come out within two weeks. Q155 Paul Farrelly: So again you are refusing to do that now? Mr Higgins: It is an issue for the Secretary of State to announce that to Parliament. Q156 Paul Farrelly: I would suggest it is an issue for you as well in front of the Select Committee to tell us. Mr Higgins: The Secretary of State and the Olympic Board will go and review our overall plans and then will make an announcement to Parliament. Q157 Chairman: So the Secretary of State will be announcing the budget you expect in two weeks' time. Mr Higgins: Within the next two weeks you will get further details. Q158 Chairman: Is it possible for you also to publish your projected cash flows, in other words a schedule of payments as you expect them to be made over the course of the next five years? Mr Higgins: Absolutely. We do publish a corporate plan and we publish a business plan. The corporate plan covers five years and the business plan covers the year ahead. Q159 Chairman: Will that give a precise break down of what cheques you expect to write and when? Mr Higgins: It gives the monthly cash flow; it does not give the individual cheques. Q160 Chairman: You said that you thought a significant proportion of the contingency would be spent. The Permanent Secretary, as you will have seen, suggested that actually the chances were that all of the contingency will be spent. Do you think he was being unduly pessimistic? Mr Higgins: I suppose for a project of this size, scale and complexity with all the risks attached to it that would be hopefully a conservative statement. Q161 Chairman: When that figure was set most people believed that it was set at such a high level that whatever cost escalation took place, nevertheless you would come in under budget. It now appears that despite having set that figure at such a high level, you are going to spend it all, if not exceed it. Mr Higgins: No, that is not the case. We have always said we think it is a realistic and prudent budget and a prudent contingency. The biggest thing we can do is to continue to deliver to milestone--- Q162 Chairman: But if it is all going to be spent it is not that prudent a contingency? Mr Higgins: We think it is a prudent contingency. Q163 Chairman: Although the likelihood is that it is all going to be spent? Mr Higgins: No, I have never said that. Q164 Chairman: The Permanent Secretary has. Mr Higgins: I think it is a conservative statement. What we are saying is that it is a prudent contingency at this stage in the project. Most importantly, we need to work to a budget. We have been very clear in what I said at the same committee that in the end we do not tend to go back to the funders committee for further allocation of contingency for the next six months; that is for certain. Q165 Paul Farrelly: When we were in Vancouver I think the general reaction from the people organising the winter games there was that they would die for a level of contingency that is now incorporated into our Olympics budget. Mr Higgins, you said you are familiar with using levels of contingency between 30 and 60% on a prudent basis in projects. Could you write to the Committee afterwards, and perhaps Mr Armitt you can give us your experience as well, and detail to us the projects that you personally have been involved in that have had a level of contingency above 50 and at 60%, because I think we would find that quite useful as a comparison? Mr Higgins: Yes. Mr Armitt: Can I just pick that point up. At Network Rail we were spending on the infrastructure and the renewals on the railway over two billion a year. Those were broken down into a very large number of individual projects. It would be quite normal for us at the early stage of development and design of any of those projects to have a 60% contingency. As the project develops and as you get more certainty about the scope of works, the detail of design, so it goes down, and by the time you let a contract to contractors you may well have reduced the contingency to 25%. Your contingency is one which is based on experience, it is based on what is a sensible amount to allow, and all you are going is saying: "We have very limited information at the moment and we now have to price what that limited information can tell us, but experience over many, many projects, over many industries, indeed, would tell you that you should then add a contingency which experience has shown is a sensible one to add. Indeed, when Treasury was arguing that a larger contingency was necessary, all Treasury was doing was looking at its experience of many projects over different government departments over many years and saying that that would be a sensible figure to allow. I think, as David has already said, the 9.3 billion, or the 6.1 plus contingency of about two which we are dealing with, we believe, is sensible in the circumstances. We have every confidence that it is realistic and we treat it as the absolute maximum that we have available to us to deliver the games, and the decisions we make all the time are driven by how do we operate and deliver this within the total sum of money, and I have no intention of going over it. To say to me, "Do I guarantee that absolutely it is not going to happen?", no, I could not do that, but I would argue that from everything I have seen it is a realistic assessment which has been made and one which we are determined to work within. Paul Farrelly: Clearly, if you want a guarantee you go to Dixons or Comet. Chairman: I think we have to move on. Paul Farrelly: I think as part of the letter it would be very useful for you to outline your experience of using contingencies in Network Rail in that way and bringing them down, because it would be wonderful to see those contingencies not fully used up but brought down as we complete the preparation for the games. Q166 Helen Southworth: Can I move you on to some of the issues around construction, particularly to find out whether the pool of available contractors and engineers is going to be big enough for you to take a good negotiating position. We have had comments from the Chief Executive of the Construction Federation in The Times in November saying the market was buoyant and that the firms can afford to cherry pick jobs; and he has also described the Olympics as essentially a one-off project - he is obviously very small in his field - and that long-term opportunities are not there. We are rather interested to know how you are going to get a good deal for the British public on this. Mr Armitt: He is quite right; the construction sector is buoyant, the construction sector has now been buoyant since about 1997, which is ten years, which is quite unusual. The reality is that contractors will pick and choose and therefore, as we have already seen, if it is something which is very usual, such as the aquatic centre, then you will have less interest than you will in the roads and bridges. On the roads and bridges and the broad infrastructure across the whole project, which itself is worth far more than the aquatic centre, we have had a lot of interest in and we have got bid lists which you would treat as being normal of anything from four to six contractors. This is after you have selected from the ones who demonstrate interest. So our experience at the moment would suggest that we are getting a very high level of interest in the vast majority of the projects we are letting. I would be the first to accept and expect, but if you have got something which is very unusual then that will attract fewer contractors because in a buoyant market they would say, "That is not one for us", but in overall terms it is going well, we are seeing a lot of interest from both the designers, which are just as important as the contractors. Q167 Helen Southworth: So you are getting a better response in some ways to the infrastructure issues rather than the special components? Mr Armitt: Yes, as I say, if you take something---. The vast bulk of what we are doing on the games is not in specialised buildings such as the one which gets all the publicity, which is the aquatic centre. That is an iconic and unusual building and, therefore, there will be a limited number of major contractors who would show an interest in that and we had three who bid for that. When it comes to the works across the rest of the site, which, as I say, in volume terms comes to more than the venues, the venue expenditure is less than is spent on the park and the regeneration and the infrastructure which is going in, all of which provides for massive legacy for this part of London. The venues are a smaller part of that and, therefore, of slightly less concern in terms of the number of bidders that we get. Q168 Helen Southworth: Can I ask you about the site survey work, the kind of dull infrastructure stuff? We were told last autumn that only 50% of the site survey works had been undertaken. In March we have been told that 75% of the area has undergone site investigation. How confident are you that there are not going to be any unpleasant things underground that you are going to find as you go along? Mr Armitt: Clearly, as each investigation takes place and does not reveal anything, more and more confident. We are now over 90% on the inspections, so we are a lot more confident today than we were last year. Q169 Helen Southworth: Ninety per cent means that you can guarantee at this stage? Mr Armitt: Of the planned bore holes which we intended to carry out 90% have been carried out and, therefore, that gives us high level of certainty. That does not guarantee, again, anything. From my own previous experience, I have had all the bore holes and then somewhere in between the bore holes you find something unexpected, but, clearly, the more bore holes you do the greater you reduce that risk, and coming back to how you manage your contingency and mitigate the risks that you face, the more exploratory work you do up front, the more in control you are and, therefore, the fewer unexpected problems, and so far we have done well. Q170 Helen Southworth: How have you prioritised the site in terms of volume investigating? Mr Armitt: From previous experience, from previous knowledge which you can obtain as to what industries were working in which particular parts of the site, what was going on over there. There are a lot of records that you consult. Those records tell you what was going on. Those tell you where you are likely to potentially find the more hazardous materials, in the same way as the archaeological background will tell you where to go and dig from an archaeological point of view. Q171 Helen Southworth: Have you had access to the highest priority areas of the site in those terms? Mr Armitt: Yes. Q172 Helen Southworth: We have talked around the legacy issues of the buildings, but one of the things that we have experienced as we have been looking round different sites is that is not enough work was done before design as to what would be the end project, and we do have very considerable concerns around that on two issues. One is on cost overruns that you inevitably get when people start designing as they go rather than designing before, which is just a waste of money, and the other is on what we believe to be a responsibility, not just to deliver an Olympic Games, which is extremely important, but to also make sure that we are using public funds in the best possible way so that we can actually get a return. We had some questions before about what returns you are expecting to pay back into the Lottery funds and other funds. You did not seem awfully confident that you were going to be able to deliver on that. Is that not an essential part of your planned outcomes? Mr Armitt: If you take the sporting venues, then the legacy use of any sporting venue is something which is discussed in detail by ourselves with LOCOG, with the various sporting bodies, with the local authorities, who will have a view as to what they think is going to be most useful in their particular constituency following the games, and that causes us to say that we will design this particular venue recognising those are the sports which we are being advised by everybody are the most likely to take place in there in the future, that is the scale of the seating which they expect in the future, that is the degree of car parking which they think is going to be suitable in the future. All of that takes place and influences the design which we carry out for the venues. If you take the International Broadcasting Centre, which is essentially a very large space for a massive 20,000 journalists to operate from to put the Olympics around the world, that is a very significant opportunity on the edge of Hackney, close to the games, and again we are looking still at two short-listed bidders who have slightly different views of how their building could be translated after the games into future use. What you do not do today is decide with anybody, and, indeed, the local authorities would not wish to decide today, precisely how that building was going to be used in 2013/2014. What you do is say: what is the nature of the use and which of the two bidders is likely to give more flexibility for the LDA and the local authorities to determine how best they see the balance between accommodation, between housing, between office use, between factory use, whatever people have in mind for what is a very significant building, one and a half million square feet, post the games for legacy? Outside of that the London Development Agency is appointing a master planner at the moment who, over the next 18 months to two years, will in fact produce a master plan for the wider Olympic site which will go for planning consent in 2009/2010 to ensure that going forward there is a continuum of activity on the site and it is not one where simply the games take place, everybody stops and says: "What are we going to do next?", which is what has happened elsewhere. I would argue from everything which I have seen in this country, we are taking an approach to legacy in a far higher level of detail than has been the case in the past, a massive amount of consultation with the people who are interested in how the site is going to develop. Our job is to ensure, first and foremost, that we do provide something which is absolutely right for the games and at the same time take into account, as far as we can in the time available, what is the best opportunity for legacy and make sure we provide the opportunity for that legacy use in our designs, and I believe we are doing that very thoroughly and very responsibly. Q173 Helen Southworth: It does not give me an awful lot of confidence in terms of the business focus of this huge investment of public money. The idea that 2013/2014 is too close a time for you to be able to consider what the end use us going to does not seem reasonable. Mr Armitt: We are looking at the end use, and the end use of the stadium has been very much focused under the guidance of the sporting bodies as to what is the ideal opportunity, for example, for the stadium. Lord Coe: Can I make a very quick point. No host city has ever undertaken this level or quality of work in its legacy thinking this far out. We are five years away from an opening ceremony. We are absolutely focused as much on the operational success of these games as what we leave behind. Every piece of design, every bit of thinking is about what we do, what we leave behind that genuinely communities can use, and I think you will find that we have actually nudged the Olympic thinking into a very different era. Q174 Helen Southworth: So which disciplines have not yet had a full agreement with the national governing body on where events are going to take place and the design of the venue for the games and for legacy? How many? Lord Coe: We work on a daily basis with all our national governing bodies to make sure that, both in terms of operational success and legacy, this is a seamless programme. Q175 Helen Southworth: That is as read, but really in terms of the venues currently planned, how many do not have a legacy outcome ingredient? Lord Coe: Five years out, this is exactly the kind of discussions, conversations, consultations we have undertaken. If you look at the Olympic stadium, the Olympic stadium, as John rightly said, there is no justification - and this is where legacy is the heart of our thinking - for leaving a second 80,000 seater stadium in London. Track and field primary purpose reduced to 25,000 going forward with a live facility, and that facility will have track and field as its basis but we are discussing with local football clubs, we are discussing with local rugby clubs, we have already started discussions with UK Athletics. All these discussions are live and taking place, and five years out the question that we would not want to be sitting here answering is: "Why are you not involved in those discussions?" Absolutely we are, and that is taking place across every venue and every sport. Q176 Helen Southworth: Perhaps I can ask you about the interrelationship between designing and building the venues in terms of that time-line and knowing what the legacy is going to be for that venue. How are those going to match up? How are they currently matching up? What is the plan for those? What is the programme? Mr Higgins: They are very closely involved. British cycling is heavily involved, national swimming is involved in that, British canoeing is involved in the canoeing facilities, UK athletics have been in and met with us, gone through many of the details of legacy, so on every single one of the venues there is a lot of discussion on legacy and design. Q177 Helen Southworth: Would you be able to give us an indication of the programme planning for each those venues that identifies what the legacy agreement is going to be and how it matches into the design process, where it comes into the design process? Mr Higgins: We can certainly write to you and set that out, but I can assure you that there are stakeholder groups set up on every venue that involves both the local authorities, who have a key role as well, plus the national supporting bodies. Mr Deighton: Can I give you an example. There are actually some outstanding examples of this going on. To the north of the park, an area we call Eton Manor which in Paralympics will be the venue for the wheelchair tennis and the archery during the Olympics Games and the facility for training in the main, we already have lined up a legacy for five-aside football, for hockey and for tennis where we have been working with the national governing bodies, with the local authorities. The original intention, and it is actually very creative, we are taking the hockey pitches further south, rolling them up, laying them back out at the top in Eton Manor using, effectively, the changing rooms and the indoor facilities to service all three sports. We consulted broadly with the people locally. It is quite close to Hackney Marshes with a wonderful soccer tradition and they said, "We must have a five-aside soccer legacy too." So we are now working through a plan which has hockey, tennis and soccer all laid out as part of the legacy. So, this is five years out; this is just splendid work. Q178 Helen Southworth: If you can let us have a note on that to see how those two things match up, that would be very useful. Can I ask if we can have an indication of what return on the investment you are expecting, what targets you are expecting on that return in order to give us an indication of what amount is going to be paid back in? It is something that we have a very particular interest in, those of us who are in the regions that are not going to benefit at all from the infrastructure investments in that area, but who are seeing a very significant decline in the amount of money that is available for our projects locally. Mr Armitt: Yes, I can do that. I would make the point that those returns are more likely to come from things that have a real commercial opportunity such as the village and the housing, rather than an individual sports venue. Sports venues, by and large, are not particularly profit making, so it is more likely to be the returns which come from the commercial activities which are carried on. Q179 Helen Southworth: That is why it is incredibly important to see it because our sporting venues and our heritage venues and other venues are actually taking the hit and we want to see that paid back. So that is of very, very considerable concern and interest to us. Lord Coe: If I may say so very briefly, I would hate this Committee to run away with the idea that London is anything other than poorly served in any of these facilities that we are leaving. London has fallen way behind most of our regional cities compared to our European capitals, so this is not a self-indulgence in a capital; this is a city of seven and a half million people, has one 50 metre swimming pool, no cycling facility, no track and field facility worthy of its name and a whole series of sports that have survived on the largesse of local authorities in sub-standard conditions. So I think we have to be very clear here about the difference between a cost and an investment, and I hear John furnishing you with those figures, but I would also make the very clear point that there is a much broader implication, and if you go into large parts of London they will tell you that they have been 30 or 40 years behind where most of our regional cities have been for a long time. Q180 Chairman: British Cycling pointed out to us that there was a cycling facility but you have just knocked it down, but actually what you are proposing to place it with is going to be fantastic for the Games but the legacy use they think is inferior to what was there before. Mr Higgins: Is that a recent comment? Q181 Chairman: Two weeks ago to us here. Mr Higgins: That is funny because Peter King was in the office the other day. Lord Coe: Two days ago. Mr Higgins: He has been right across the whole plans and he is very supportive, as was his Committee last Saturday week. Q182 Chairman: He has told us that the Velopark does not provide an adequate or comparable replacement for the road and off-road facilities provided to cycling on the Eastway Circuit which has been lost as part of the Olympic Park. Mr Higgins: That is strange because it is not my record of discussions with him. Lord Coe: Nor mine. Q183 Chairman: I am sorry, that was a written submission to us, so perhaps you should go and talk to him. John Armitt, you have also mentioned the Media and Press Centre, which obviously you describe as a very, very large space and that you were in discussion as to what might happen to it. The Mayor of Hackney has been quoted as saying that you are considering a future for it as a supermarket distribution depot. That is not true? Mr Armitt: Absolutely. It is a typical bit of rumour mongering which tends to go on around any sort of scheme like this. We have certainly not done that. At the end of the day it is not our decision as the ODA as to how these buildings are used; it is in fact Hackney's and the Mayor's and others, looking at London as a whole. What we have to do is ensure that we provide a building which is flexible, to provide a variety of opportunities to ensure that people are really satisfied that they have the best out of that one and a half million square feet. Chairman: Philip Davies. Q184 Mr Davies: Can I ask I ask John Armitt and David Higgins what checks either are carried out or you expect to be carried out on the people who are working on the Olympic site, given that it is such an important strategic location? Mr Higgins: Is this employees? Q185 Mr Davies: Yes. Mr Higgins: There will be a number of levels of checks on individuals from biometrics through to at least one level of biometric checking, so depending on the level of risk we will scale that up. Q186 Mr Davies: The reason I ask you in particular is I am not sure whether you are aware but last week at a Magistrates' Court in London an employee of somebody who was working on the Olympic site was jailed for 19 weeks for being found in possession of a knife, which he should not have been in possession of, at half past two in the morning. He is 32 years' old, he had 70 previous offences, including grievous bodily harm and wounding, and I wondered whether or not that was the type of person that you felt was suitable to be working on the Olympic site? Mr Higgins: You obviously have information that we do not have. So this is an employee of the ODA? Q187 Mr Davies: Somebody working on the Olympic site, possibly an employee of one of the contractors. Mr Higgins: If you give us the details we will look into it. Q188 Mr Davies: The point I am trying to get to, what checks - and the horse has bolted with this particular individual and he is not going to be working on the site for the next few weeks because he is in prison - are being put in place to make sure that inappropriate people are not working on the Olympic site given the importance of it as a strategic national location? Mr Higgins: We will scale up the checks. Clearly at the moment what we are doing is moving dirt; we are cleaning dirt and so the level of risk to the project now is much lower than it will be when structures are moving into there. So the main Olympic fence goes in in a couple of years' time and at the moment there is a three-metre hoarding around the site to give it greater security. So we will scale up the whole level of control of the site and equally so when we have 10,000 or 15,000 workers coming on to the site every day through a slot period of time we will do certain levels of checks, and if the risk profile of the site or of the Olympics increases we will increase that level. So we will have a capacity to scale up the level of individual checking, so our entry systems to the site, when we move into the critical areas of structure, will allow two levels of biometric testing. Whether we will use those all the time will be decided by our own advice, and we have people from the Met Police and security services embedded in our organisation. We have a site level security team in which we have four police officers that are purely site dedicated - they police the site all the time. So this is an area where we have a large workforce in which we have to be realistic in terms of delivering the Games. What we cannot do is create it in such an environment that no one wants to work on it and we cannot get workers at the site, and we do not deliver the Games or we deliver them at a massive cost premium. So we are taking a lot of expert advice, involving the Met Police, of how we secure the games. Chairman: Rosemary McKenna. Q189 Rosemary McKenna: Just briefly, can I say how much I support what the organisations are doing because despite the fact that I live in Scotland most of the time I actually spend part of the time in London and I think it will be tremendous for the people across the country. But apart from the work going on with the elite athletes across the nations and regions, what other work are you doing to ensure that there will be a legacy; there will be benefits to the nations and regions outside of London? Lord Coe: In fact it is probably appropriate to take you through a day I had in Scotland just three or four weeks ago, where we focused our attention on northeast Scotland and visited various schemes, various projects driven by local authorities, driven through our nations and regions' teams, Highland and Islands Agencies, the University of the Highlands and Islands behind that as well, so there is the skills and the employment agenda. There are clearly the participation programmes as a part of the inspiration and certainly the opportunity. We are working very closely with Julia Bracewell, Chair of Support Scotland, so all these agencies and partnerships that I actually find quite revealing because there is a new and a fresh focus in bringing these groups to the table and forming partnerships around sport, and that was an extraordinarily good day; and, again, I witnessed four projects that day that were born of our bid in Singapore, and pushing forward into all those areas. So it is an ongoing process with nations and regions, and is built around the nine English regions, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and in each of those areas we are driven by one force and that is recognising that local opportunities have to be scoped out locally, they will be delivered locally; that we can help enable, we can bring some of these partnerships to the table when we get our ambassadorial programme up and running. We can use those people to actually get into those projects. But the real skill here is bringing local partnerships together that really understand at a local level what the best issues are. All those nations and regions have now produced strategies going forward; some are based around tourism, some are based around sports participation; some are based around introducing new types of industry into those areas. So there is a great deal of thought. Again, I have to say that is the way it should be five years out. Q190 Rosemary McKenna: I am sure that Glasgow benefited tremendously from the work that you had already done in their successful bid to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and I am sure they will be maximising the publicity in London - "Come and see Glasgow before you leave when you visit the Games." Can I move on now to ask you the question that has been asked by the organisation UK Sports Association for People with Learning Disabilities, and we are all extremely concerned about the fact that because of cheating at the Sydney Paralympics they have been excluded from world sport. This is a really, really serious issue and it would be wrong of us not to raise it and ask you what you can do to support their bid to come back into world sport. Lord Coe: Yes, it is ostensibly the work within the British Paralympic Association and of course the International Paralympic Committee. I have met Lord Rix of Mencap to discuss this issue particularly and I know Paul Deighton can add to that. Mr Deighton: I have been involved in meetings with the British Paralympic Association at the recent international Paralympic Congress where this is a specific topic and where the IPC and the Learning Disability Association have a group working together with the clear mandate to resolve this problem in time to make it work for London 2012, and we are absolutely behind that happening. With the BPA we have encouraged the acceleration of that resolution because of course the athletes need to know that there is time - you cannot tell them in 2011, "By the way, turn up." Q191 Rosemary McKenna: They need funding, they need preparation. Mr Deighton: Exactly. So we are absolutely behind the effort of the two organisations to resolve this so that they can agree on the rules for entry and get the athletes ready in time to participate in 2012. Q192 Rosemary McKenna: It was a draconian decision that was made to exclude them forever. Not even many of our athletes who have been involved in drug situations are excluded for ever, so I feel that it was a terrible decision. Maybe some of us feel they should be but this is a different situation and I would hope that it would be resolved as soon as possible. Mr Deighton: It is a good opportunity for sports administrators to serve the athletes well and let us hope they rise to that challenge. Lord Coe: And that decision does need to be taken well in advance of any preparation period that the athletes will need. Chairman: Alan Keen. Q193 Alan Keen: You are the people with the direct responsibility day to day for delivery. Could you explain how both Tessa Jowell and the Mayor are involved? Are they proactive or are they a backstop to whom you go when you need some pushing - when government needs pushing? How do they fit in with it? Lord Coe: It may be easier for me to kick that off because of course they are my colleagues on the Olympic Board, together with Lord Moynihan, who is Chairman of the British Olympic Association; so they are more than just chairs sitting there. The Olympic Board is an organisation fundamental to the delivery of the Games, and it allows us to bring all four core interests and the four key stakeholders to the table. We have an Olympic Board meeting this afternoon actually. That is a very important part of the process and having government, obviously a large part of the legacy and delivery through London, and the British Olympic Association there safeguarding the interests of Olympic sport, and of course as Chairman of the organising committee charged with staging the Games that is an important group of people. Q194 Alan Keen: You are getting full backing from government? There is no question of any doubt at any time? Everyone is 100% behind it, is that correct? Lord Coe: Absolutely. Mr Armitt: It is the same from the ODA's point of view. Coming into it all we get is full support and the Olympic Board has made all the decisions which need to be made in a timely manner, which has enabled us to make the progress which we have made. Lord Coe: The balance here of course is making sure that we drive ahead but with all times light touch from government to allow the people that are experienced in the delivery of Games present and past to be able to do that. Q195 Alan Keen: We have all been inspired in the past by events which may not be our favourite, with all due respect to Lord Moynihan who is coming along in a minute, and with all due respect the rowers have given us lots of medals, but the blue ribbon events is obviously athletics - and obviously this is for you, Lord Coe. The stadium is going to be the centre for British athletics, presumably. How will that affect Crystal Palace, Gateshead and other places? We obviously need somewhere like that in London and we have struggled over quite a lot of years to get somewhere. How will athletics fit in after the Games? Lord Coe: Athletics is a remarkably national sport; it is one of those sports that has deep roots in all our communities wherever we live, so I do not see a facility in London doing anything other than supporting our opportunity to bring more international events to the United Kingdom, supportive of our existing centres of excellence, like Birmingham Alexander Stadium, Gateshead, as you have mentioned, Northern Ireland, the Cwmbran Stadium in Wales, these are all very important parts of the hub. The broader issue you raised about track and field being the blue ribbon sport, it is important that we have a well stocked shop window there. Track and field has to get into the same areas of expertise that rowing and British cycling particularly have shown the way. We have a new Chairman, we have a new Chief Executive of the sport and I think the one thing that I have witnessed in so many governing bodies going forward - and we should never, ever forget that actually when all said and done any number of organisations out there will contribute towards the Games, but actually our ability to climb up that medal table is entirely down to the quality of our coaching and the centres of excellence within our national governing bodies, so we need many more of those national governing bodies to be rowing and cycling. One of the things I do witness is a real focus and a new focus being brought to governing bodies knowing that there is a five-year programme here where we do actually have to get the very most out of our elite level performers, and that means having a world class administration, world class coaching, hungry, motivated competitors, and if you have all those three normally you get athletes up on to the rostrum. Q196 Alan Keen: I know we have not had the next Olympic Games yet but are the other nations, particularly the big nations - and we had 12 months at least in Brisbane before the Sydney Olympics - already beginning to book up facilities around the UK now, or is it too early? Lord Coe: It is very early and I am sure that when the British Olympic Association give their submission in a few minutes' time they will tell you that most national Olympic committees focus their attention once the preceding Games have passed. Through our nations and regions groups we will publish a preparation camp guide around about the time of Beijing. The submission closed 31 January this year. We have about 750 submissions from all parts of the country for offering world class facilities. It is our responsibility now to sift through those and set very tough criteria to decide. And it is not just about venues, it is the critical mass of coaching, it is the critical mass of medical back-up, rehabilitation, a community that understands what sport is about. So it is simply more than providing the bricks and mortar. We want to use the Olympic Games as an opportunity of getting as many national Olympic committees. We have, through the LOCOG budget a support grant for national Olympic Committees to come here and spend time. As you know very well the preparation now is no longer a "It will be all right on the night" where everybody flies in three days beforehand and hope they get used to some big time zone changes. 170 countries based themselves in Australia anything up to two or three years before the Games. Our success in the Sydney Games I think was in large part due to our ability to have got the teams out there for proper periods of preparation, and we want this as a way of engaging the whole country in the 2012 experience. Q197 Alan Keen: Part of that will be engaging the rest and there will be the Cultural Olympics and obviously people in the arts' world have been very concerned about money going to the Olympics and depriving them of the level of funding they have been used to. We have been spending a los of money on preparation for the Olympics. Are you making sure that enough money is going back into the arts to make sure that we do have a really full Cultural Olympiad? Lord Coe: The Cultural Olympiad is a very, very important process for us. I will ask Paul Deighton very briefly to take you through our thinking in that area. Mr Deighton: We have probably what will be in Olympic Games' history the most ambitious plans for the Cultural Olympiad and for us it is a crucial way to get as many people as possible engaged in the Olympic Games, and it is also one of the best vehicles to do it countrywide because of course there is nothing demanding that the Cultural Olympiad be focused on London. There are really three tiers of activity: the top tier of the traditional Olympic ceremony is the opening and closing ceremonies, for example, which really do set the tone. We are of course already working on the eight minute segments we have in the two closing ceremonies in Beijing and on our plans for those we have teams in place working on them already. We are likely to combine those with celebrations around the UK to kick things off back here in the UK. There is a whole second tier of what I would describe as national events, about ten projects that teams are currently working on, and a number of them already have funding in place and have been able to attract funding; for example, Youth Music has put £9 million into a singing festival. The Arts Council is working very hard on a project they are calling Artists Taking the Lead, which will allow for in each of the nations and regions some kind of artwork in public spaces. So these things are already happening. Then there is the third tier, which we call the Cultural Olympiad, which is really the flowering of many, many festivals around the country which will build up from 2008 through to 2012, and one of the catalysts we are using to help that is that we have developed a non-commercial form of our brand, what we call our endorsement brand, which will be our inspired by brand, which will be made available to community projects in culture, sport and education to bless, to inspire projects which have come up because of the Games and which fit the framework we have created. So there is a very comprehensive plan in place at all those levels to really build up right through the 2008-2012 period. Q198 Alan Keen: So the dread that we have that because of the shortage of money and the possible overspend that you four might have to sing at the opening of the Olympics, we do not need to fear that! Lord Coe: I think we can mercifully save you from that ghastly thought! Chairman: Paul Farrelly. Q199 Paul Farrelly: Just while we are talking about the Olympic Stadium itself I do not want to speculate about the suitability of a large athletic stadium for rugby union or a football league club, I just want to get on to the costs again, Mr Armitt. The costs of the stadium are now quoted as £496 million compared with the £280 million in the Candidature File. To be precise, is the 496 at current prices of 2012 prices? Mr Armitt: No, the 496 is the estimated outturn price in fact you can do a very quick and, I would accept, crude calculation, but if you simply took 2004 to 2012 and escalated it for expected escalation and added VAT on to that escalated price you get pretty close to 496 million. So it is not that different. Q200 Paul Farrelly: What is the multiplier that you use for inflation? Mr Armitt: About 6% per annum. Q201 Paul Farrelly: And with that we can get part of the way there --- Mr Armitt: You get pretty well the whole way. Q202 Paul Farrelly: One of the things that you said in front of the London Assembly was that actually one element of the increased costs was actually the cost of conversion into legacy mode. Lots of us around the country have bitten our lips while the good causes have been raided and new swimming pools cannot go ahead because of the raid on the Lottery, but we have bitten our lip for the regeneration of London and the national pride of having the Games because there was going to be a legacy there. But now we are being told that actually we have to pay extra for that legacy. Mr Armitt: No, the 496 includes the conversion from 80,000 to 25,000. Q203 Paul Farrelly: But the cost was not included in the original --- Mr Armitt: Whether it was included in the 280 or not I do not know but it is certainly included in the 496. Q204 Paul Farrelly: But we are being told that the cost is extra now for legacy conversion, effectively. Mr Armitt: No, it is not. No. Clearly the cost of converting something there is a cost and that cost will be borne in 2013 when that conversion is happening. But we have included money in the Stadium cost to convert it down from 80,000 to 25,000. Q205 Paul Farrelly: How much is that? Mr Armitt: My recollection is it is about 25 million. Q206 Paul Farrelly: I will labour the point. We had thought that the legacy cost would be in there in the planning in the bid in the first place. It is rather like the rest of the country being spun around the Olympic rings and while we are still dizzy we are being bashed over the head by the Olympic hammer because we are paying extra money on top of what we thought we were paying. Mr Armitt: I am not quite sure how to answer that but I would make the point that what is happening here is that there is an enormous amount of the expenditure on the Games which you can look at and say, "This is providing a long term benefit." This was one of the most rundown parts of London, an enormous site the size of Hyde Park, 500-600 acre site, which is a very rundown part of London - a contaminated area of high unemployment, etcetera etcetera. At the end of the Games this site will have been rejuvenated into one which provides a platform for major investment ongoing for the following 20 years. You can look at what we are spending in infrastructure, decontamination, putting the overhead cables underground, providing sporting facilities, providing job opportunities through the IBC and providing a fantastic central spine of parkland. The Lee Valley, the river will look nothing like it looks today; it will be far, far better than it is today. All of that is legacy and it is being provided through the opportunity of the Games. So when I look at people complaining about five billion, six billion that we are spending on the parkland, nearly all of that money is there for the long term and it is providing real legacy opportunity for the country and for every company that has been involved in supplying it. Half of the suppliers so far to us have come from around the country not from London, and those businesses are building their business off the back of being able to supply to the Olympic Games; they are obtaining experience which will enable them to bid across the world for future Olympic Games. So there is an enormous opportunity which this is providing, which I am quite confident is being taken and it will at the end of the day, I believe, be good value for money. Q207 Paul Farrelly: We do not want to begrudge East London anything but can I give you a homily of my own? At 2004 prices the cost of the Media Centre alone - 2004 prices without an opposite estimate - is ten times the annual budget for regeneration of North Staffordshire, which has a population equivalent of three and a half London boroughs. Mr Armitt: The Media Centre must be one of the most complex buildings that is necessary as part of broadcasting the Olympics to billions of people across the world. It is probably the largest journalistic activity which takes place across the world every five years. You do not provide a building of that scale for 20,000 journalists without guaranteeing that they are going to be able to do their jobs properly because if they do not then we fail in showcasing Britain and in showcasing the Olympics. Lord Coe: And showcasing North Staffordshire! Q208 Paul Farrelly: We understand that and it is important to get
the accurate commentary in North Staffordshire as well as Glasgow and anywhere
else, but you can understand that the Committee and a Parliament that
represents the nation and the regions because of the size of the sums involved
it is important for us to be accurately appraised of the costs and how those
preparations are going. Could we leave
this Committee today - we have a figure for the Stadium - with up to date
figures for the other four major centres, which I do not think we have? That is the Velopark, the Aquatic Centre,
the Media Centre and the Olympic Village.
Could you give us the four figures for those as well as the figure that
we already have for the Stadium Q209 Paul Farrelly: I fully understand that but do you have an anticipated date by which all those numbers will be known? Mr Armitt: They will be progressive through the next 12 months because most of the major contracts will be placed by that time. Q210 Chairman: Could I raise two specific issues with you very quickly? The first is the Volleyball Arena, the Basketball Arena and the Fencing Arena were intended to be temporary and you stress that they could be relocated to other cities after the Games and that this would be part of the sporting legacy in the regions. We are now told that apparently these are no longer going to be temporary and are going to be located in permanent venues. Can you update us on whether that is correct? Mr Armitt: Basketball is certainly a temporary stadium; it is one which we are in the throes of developing the designs for at the moment and the intention is that that is a stadium which can be demounted and relocated in the future. The Volleyball is Earls Court. Handball is a permanent stadia and fencing is one which is being looked at at the moment. Q211 Chairman: So the report that basketball may be transferred to the Millennium Dome, the O2 is incorrect? Lord Coe: Those are the finals. Mr Deighton: The finals were always gong to be played there. Lord Coe: Can I just make the broader point that our template going forward was where possible to use existing facilities. During the bidding process it was actually one of the most important concepts for us that we already had 64% of those facilities in place. Where we could not make a cogent case for usage going forward in any structured way we wanted to deliver in temporary, and only where we could make that case did we want to put something down that was permanent, but we have always been very open to where permanent facilities become available, particularly in our existing structures, where we might be able to make the Games a better spectacle for athletes, the presentation of those sports, spectator access, we have clearly looked at that and that will be an ongoing process. Q212 Chairman: And the report specifically about fencing, that that is now going to be transferred to the ExCel, is that correct? Lord Coe: None of that thinking has been finalised but as I make the point, if we are able to look at existing facilities as venues that has to be a sensible way of approaching things. Q213 Chairman: Although you will then lose the projected legacy use across the regions? Lord Coe: Yes, clearly all this has to be in conjunction finally with IOC sign-off, discussions with our governing bodies and all the legacy thinking. But that is where we are at the moment and that is a process that should be taking place. Q214 Chairman: Can I ask you on one other area, you will be aware that British Shooting have said to us that they think that the proposed site at Woolwich is not the best and that you would do better to move shooting to a new facility at Dartford, which would provide legacy use. Are you in discussion with British Shooting about this or do you simply reject their suggestion? Lord Coe: I will ask Paul Deighton to take you through the detail but, no. We are of course in discussion with British Shooting but we are very comfortable about the venue that we have chosen; it has been signed off by the International Federation and signed off by the International Olympic Committee and we are discussing legacy and all the other things that you would be doing. The template again, let us be very clear about this, through the International Olympic Committee and through our bidding process was to provide a compact Games. We were able to go into that bidding process by saying that 80% of our athletes were within 20 minutes' travel time and we wanted to bring sports into the city that were accessible to new client groups, and that was clearly part of the legacy and the participation programme going forward. Mr Deighton: Nothing has changed since the host city contract was signed. When we originally made the bid the shooting was sited in Bisley; we moved to Woolwich because in order to win the Games we were required to have a more compact Games and Woolwich would enable the athletes to stay in the Olympic Village. At that time the IOC, the International Shooting Federation and the national governing body all signed off on it and nothing has changed, so we expect to move forward on that basis. Q215 Chairman: They may have all signed off on it but British Shooting, which is the governing body, has clearly not signed off. Mr Deighton: No, they did sign off but they had a change of Chairman. Q216 Chairman: They have changed their minds. Mr Deighton: British Shooting signed off on it; they have had a new Chairman who has revisited it. Q217 Chairman: But you are not persuaded that you should revisit it. Mr Deighton: We are staying. Chairman: You are staying. Q218 Philip Davies: I was reading the paper a couple of weeks ago and Barry Hearn seemed to be claiming that Leyton Orient would be playing at the Olympic Stadium after the Games. Could you tell us where we are with Leyton Orient? Mr Higgins: There have been talks; there is nothing finalised. Certainly they are an attractive tenant, that is for sure. Q219 Philip Davies: Are they the most likely tenant? Mr Higgins: They are one of the tenants, including National Athletics and potentially Prudential Football. Chairman: Can I thank you very much.
Memoranda submitted by British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Lord Moynihan, a Member of the House of Lords, Chairman, Mr Simon Clegg, Chief Executive, British Olympic Association and Mr Phil Lane, British Paralympic Association, gave evidence.
Chairman: Can I apologise for keeping you waiting; nevertheless, welcome Lord Moynihan, Chairman of the British Olympic Association and Simon Clegg, Chief Executive, and Phil Lane of the British Paralympic Association. Philip Davies is going to start. Q220 Philip Davies: Could you tell us how much input the BOA and the BPA had in setting medal targets for Beijing and London? Mr Clegg: The British Olympic Association have set at this stage absolutely no medal targets for Beijing, but we were primarily responsible for driving the medal target for London in 2012, having called a meeting of all of the national governing bodies and all the agencies involved in Elite Sport six days after we returned from Singapore to address specifically the challenges that we would face in London in 2012. The agreement that we reached was that it was right and proper that as a country we should aspire to be the best that we could be in the context of hosting the Games in 2012, and in that context the target was set for fourth place, which will require Great Britain to deliver, at this moment in time, 20 gold medals, but our expectation is that by 2012 that will be 18 gold medals, to secure fourth place in the medal table. Mr Lane: I can say for the Paralympics actually that we were not. There was a fairly simple calculation done somewhere that if you were second last time with a bit more investment you would be first next time. That obviously discounted the fact that China was competing. We have been fairly consistent in our position that we feel we aspire to remain a top five nation with an overall higher aspiration of finishing in the top three, where we have consistently been over the years. We think that is realistic for us as a nation, a small nation in Paralympic terms, and we believe that with the right levels of investment, which are now beginning to appear, we should now be able to continue in that position. Q221 Philip Davies: A couple of weeks ago we had representatives from athletics, swimming and cycling, who were emphasising to us how hard fought these medals would be. Do you still think that fourth place is a realistic target for the UK at those Games? Mr Clegg: Absolutely. One of the things that we did shortly after coming back from Singapore was to initiate a publication, which I believe all Members of the Committee receive on an annual basis, called Countdown to 2012. That gave us an ability to model, to bring together the individual performances of each of the sports and the disciplines that will be part of the 2012 sports programme, and bring these together in a relative Olympic table, and it gave us on an annualised basis the opportunity of monitoring the progress that British sport was making. You will have seen from the last two annual reports that you have received that had the Games been staged in 2006 or 2007, and based upon the individual results from the governing body world championship's results, Great Britain would have effectively finished in seventh place in the medal table in 2006 and 2007. We are confident still that our aspirational target of fourth place in 2012 is still achievable and entirely appropriate. Lord Moynihan: It might be helpful if I add to that that as a result of that initial meeting, post-Singapore, the BOA sat down with UK Sport and worked to deliver a budget which we felt was necessary to support the delivery of that target in 2012 that you have heard Simon elaborate on. That then led to discussions with DCMS; DCMS in turn then presented their case to the Treasury and I think for the first time in my lifetime in sports politics the Treasury supported that total budget request in full. So the financing was therefore put in place to assist the governing bodies in delivering the services to their athletes that would be necessary to see us move towards fourth place by 2012. Q222 Philip Davies: Competition seems to be getting fiercer in sport, and to give you an example over the weekend I was at a swimming gala in my constituency where a 13-year old girl competing had been selected for the squad of Olympic people for 2012 because she was showing such potential. But she has very little access to swimming pool time; there are no 50 metre swimming pools in Bradford and so she has very little opportunity to use those facilities. Given that basic lack of facilities that people need do you not see that as being quite a big constraint on such an ambitious target? Mr Clegg: We have to look at it in its totality. There are 35 sports at the moment reducing to 33 sports in the Olympic movement after 2008 - 28 of those sports reducing to 26 are summer sports - and we do need to look at it across the whole. What Lord Coe said earlier on is absolutely right, that not only in London but across the country we do not have the quality and the range of facilities that many other leading sporting nations do, but it is important that we constantly look to address that issue and to put in place the best possible support mechanisms for these athletes. That is something that we are working on with the other agencies to ensure that every talented athlete in this country who has the potential to compete and represent our country in 2012 is given every opportunity of reaching their full potential. There are some constraints, of course there are, and we need to work around those to ensure that we given everyone the best chance of success. Q223 Philip Davies: Finally, our target for Beijing is that we will finish eighth in the medal table. If we either do worse or better in Beijing than that will that be an indicator of how well or badly we may do in 2012 or are each Olympic Games completely different from each other? Mr Clegg: Can I be very clear we have not set a target and under the Olympic Charter it is our exclusive responsibility to select, prepare, lead and manage that team at the Olympic Games. We will set the target based on the ongoing discussions that we will be having with the governing bodies, as we have done at previous Games, and determine where and if appropriate to set a target for Beijing. So no target has been set at this moment in time. Mr Lane: If I may, can I just say that in Paralympic terms it is a much less clear picture across the piece and in fact achieving the targets that have been in the public domain are much more demanding because it is not a simply landscape. There may be no 50 metre pools in Bradford but I suspect there are very few provisions for young disabled athletes to participate in Bradford either, and that is the picture across the country. Of course, we have a much more complex picture than that in that our sports are based on various classifications and therefore if we do not have athletes within those classifications to compete we cannot compete for the medals. So, irrespective of how many medals are available we still may not be able to compete for all of them in the way that our Olympic team possibly can. There is a fairly new dimension in terms of Paralympics - the competition is growing exponentially and by Beijing over 160 nations will be participating compared to about 120 in Sydney, and we expect more than that in London in 2012. So actually the level of competition is growing exponentially and if you look at the Athens' table countries like the Ukraine were running in fifth and sixth place. That is fairly unheard of, I suspect, if you look across some of the more Olympic sports. So it is a more challenging target to maintain for Paralympic sport in particular. Q224 Philip Davies: You have set a target for the 2012 Olympics; it seems a bit surprising that you have not yet set a target for next year's Olympics. When will you be getting around to addressing that target and will you address the issue of whether you hit or miss that target in Beijing will have an impact on the chances of us hitting our target for 2012. Mr Clegg: We have to accept that a number of our sports are already delivering to capacity. With a very regular occurrence we are delivering consistently medal success at the Olympic Games in sports like rowing, cycling and sailing - those types of sports. In the context of trying to achieve our aspirational goal of fourth place in the medal table in 2012 we are going to have to find other sports who are traditionally outside the medal table to contribute towards step change, and that is why sports like judo, triathlon, and taekwondo are so important. So actually what we need to be doing is measuring their improvement on the journey to 2012 to see if we are likely to hit that aspirational target that we have set. So it is not all about the number of gold medals that we achieve in Beijing next year, it is about looking at the whole team over all 302 Olympic medal opportunities that there will be in London to see what progress we are making collectively towards that goal. Lord Moynihan: I think that is right. If I can add to that, Beijing is seen very much as a stepping stone towards London 2012; that is one of the advantages of being a host nation. We need to see improvements in the areas that Simon has outlined. The question is wholly valid. There is no exact science that automatically delivers us any given place in the medal table, thank God, in sport, and perhaps the best example of that is if you took the gold medals of Chris Hoy's one kilometre time trial, Kelly Holmes' 800 and 1500 metre gold medals, the coxless four's gold medal and the men's four 100 gold medal. If you took those five gold medals in Athens and you substitute all five for the second place, for silver medals, and then you have the collective time between all five that differentiated five golds from five silvers it was 0.545 of one second in over 13 minutes of finals. That is like running from Fleet Street to here if you are fit and healthy, and the distance being the length of this table between all five golds being five silvers, and that would have moved us from tenth place in the medal table to seventeenth. So what that tells the British Olympic Association, and indeed everybody who is there to support the athletes, is that no stone must be left unturned in delivering the best possible services and support to all our Olympic athletes - everybody in that team - to ensure that we not only recognise the 0.545 rule that is imprinted on our minds but that we give every possible world leading support mechanism to those athletes and those coaches and to those governing bodies. As Lord Coe mentioned earlier, it is for the governing bodies to be empowered to deliver that success because it is athletes that win the gold medals and not the BOA officials, UK Sport employees or, dare I say it, even Members of this eminent Committee. Therefore, we have to make sure that every day we focus on delivering absolutely world leading support services to each and every athlete. Mr Clegg: Finally on that point, if I may, just to re-emphasise the point I was making about some sports already competing to capacity, if British cycling was a nation and delivered the same results this year at the world championships as was in the Games in 2004 they would have been ranked seventeenth in the overall medal table of the Olympic Games. Chairman: Alan Keen. Q225 Alan Keen: I agree with everything you said about the up and coming sports like taekwondo and the others you mentioned. What is it that you have been doing about these sports that have no base whatsoever in this country and yet are Olympic sports? What have you been doing about those sports? Mr Clegg: You are talking about sports right at the extreme of the spectrum and one of the challenges for us obviously is to bring them up to a standard where we feel that we are justified in entering them for the Games in 2012. Of course, by virtue of being the host nation we get automatic qualification in all of the team sports, but some of our team sports are very under-developed - take handball as a very good example. I was up with the British Handball Team earlier in the year at their national conference up in Leeds, and it is really exciting from our perspective to see how this initiative has been grasped by them and how it is raising the whole levels of performance, and now we have British handball players embedded in clubs in Denmark and we are seeing all sorts of new athletes coming into the sport who had never heard about handball before, but all of a sudden we are staging the games and they see that there is an opportunity where perhaps in their chosen sport they realised they were never going to make it, they want to be an Olympic athlete in 2012, and we are seeing some cross-fertilisation. So whether that sport can get to the standard that we believe will be necessary - because I am sure you would accept there is no point in us taking a quota place to enter a men's handball team if they get beaten 56-nil, 56-nil, 56-nil in the round-robin competition. That is not in anyone's interests - it is not in the athletes' interests, it is not in the sport's interests and it is not in the British team's interests. But we will do everything to support them as a service organisation. The British Olympic Association is a membership organisation; my Chairman and I are accountable to sport to the governing bodies and we are there to provide services to support them to ensure that they are given every opportunity of reaching their full potential. Q226 Alan Keen: I thought it was a crackpot scheme, if you do not mind me saying. Handball is played, is softball in the Games? Softball was in Athens. Mr Clegg: Softball is actually one of our more competitive team sports outside within the Olympic programme. Once again, we very narrowly failed to qualify to send a team to Beijing. Regrettably, particularly because it is a sport for women only, softball will be dropped from the programme together with baseball after the Games in Beijing; it is the first time since 1936 that the Olympic Movement has lost a sport. Q227 Alan Keen: When we are so desperate to get medals is it not a waste of money to put money into these very, very minor sports? I love the Olympic culture and tradition but it just seems to be relatively a lot of money to spend when we are so desperate for every halfpenny we can try to keep under the budgeted figure. Mr Clegg: We are an Olympic family and it was the entire Olympic family - the British Olympic Association - that subscribed to putting a bid forward for London 2012 including, I have to say, the entire support of the winter sports on the British Olympic Association. The Mission Statement that we have as an organisation is to lead the largest and most successful team to fourth place in the medals table in 2012, whilst developing the Olympic Movement in the UK. Therefore, there will be an expectation by the International Olympic Committee that we will be a very large team because actually how are we going to sell handball tickets in 2012 if there is not even a British team participating? So it is right and proper that as the host nation we should aspire to fielding the full team of 755 athletes in the British team in 2012. Q228 Alan Keen: I have forgotten now: does the host nation have the opportunity to add a sport? Mr Clegg: No. Lord Moynihan: Sadly not, no. Mr Clegg: That is entirely within the gift of the IOC Executive Committee. Q229 Alan Keen: That is a shame; darts could have been something worth putting in! Mr Clegg: Eton Fives I think is something we might win a gold medal in! Chairman: Rosemary McKenna. Q230 Rosemary McKenna: My bid is for netball! Can I raise the issue again that I raised previously about the intellectually disabled athletes who were barred in Singapore? The organisation itself has brought in very stringent rules and is appealing to have the ban removed. What are you doing to help that so that they can take part? Mr Lane: I can say that our position has been very clear right from the Sydney Games that we believe wholeheartedly that athletes with an intellectual disability should be part of the Games, but they need to be part of the Games under fair and consistent rules which are comparable to those of the other disability organisations. Just to put it into context for you, just to give you some numbers, in fact we are only talking about seven athletes in Atlanta and eight in Sydney. So as a percentage of the team as a whole it is not a huge number. However, that being said we are very consistent in our approach and we have urged the IPC and IMISFID, the international body for intellectual disabilities to deal with this issue, and I think as Paul Deighton said earlier whilst we were at the General Assembly in Seoul only in this past fortnight we in fact introduced an amendment to an Icelandic motion urging the IPC to set a target of 2012 for readmission and to make that decision early so that the necessary funding could be put in place for those athletes to prepare. So that decision will need to be taken by January 2009 at the latest in order to make sure that those athletes can adequately prepare, and we certainly would urge IPC and MISFID(?) to carry on with that and we would certainly urge UK Sport and the other funders to be consistent in making preparations for that to happen too. Q231 Rosemary McKenna: Are they failing to get funding just now because they not eligible? Mr Lane: They are indeed, yes. Q232 Rosemary McKenna: UK Sport is not able to fund them because they are ineligible at the moment. So the sport is failing because that support is not there. Mr Lane: Yes. I think it is a bit of a vicious circle and it is one which is highly regrettable. They are a significant part of our population and we abhor discrimination of any kind. Q233 Rosemary McKenna: Absolutely and I just know the joy that the people from my area get out of competing in the Special Olympics, which are quite different and separate - quite, quite separate. Mr Lane: Very much so. Q234 Rosemary McKenna: Very, very much so, but these are athletes with tremendous ability who should be taking part in the Paralympics. Mr Lane: We would agree with you wholeheartedly not least because we believe they will win medals too, so that will add to our medal targets. Rosemary McKenna: Exactly. Thank you. Chairman: Mike Hall. Q235 Mr Hall: The fundamental issue about setting targets is that you really have to achieve them. There is no point taking weak targets but if you set tougher targets they seem to fail, so it is a real minefield. The approach we have to this is that we are going to spend an awful lot of money on it, are we not? We are giving Sir Clive Woodward's Elite Performance Service more than a generous amount of money to encourage our elite athletes - £150,000 per elite athlete. Is that figure right? Mr Clegg: I am sorry, Mr Hall, I do not think you are giving anything to Sir Clive Woodward's programme. The British Olympic Association will fund the Elite Performance Programme that is developed under Clive Woodward's leadership and we are entirely responsible for securing the funding from our commercial sector. Q236 Mr Hall: I understand that, but it is £150,000 per year per athlete, is it? Mr Clegg: That is the budget figure that we are working on, yes. Q237 Mr Hall: With the UK Sport's World Class Podium they are spending about £75,000 per athlete; so are we expecting twice as much from Sir Clive Woodward's programme than the UK Sport programme? Mr Clegg: It is a complementary programme. What we are doing is identifying some of the world's leading practitioners and bringing them over to this country to work with a small number of athletes, with the support of UK Sport, to ensure, as my Chairman said earlier on, no stone is left unturned in making sure that the whole country can be proud of the performance of the British team in 2012. That is our contribution to that process. Q238 Mr Hall: You said they are complementary; they are not competing for the same amount of money then from the private sector? Mr Clegg: Absolutely not. The British Olympic Association traditionally derives all of its funding from the commercial sector. We are the custodians of the Olympic Rings and we will work in an exclusive basis with a limited number of supporters of the Olympic Movement both internationally and domestically. We are very restricted in terms of the commercial partners that we can work with. Lord Moynihan: If I might just add to that, the reason why the funding is so complementary is because the £600 million package that was announced by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer cum Prime Minister is made up of Lottery money and also government funding and a proportion from sponsorship. The funding of the Woodward programme is from the TOP sponsors and the Tier One sponsors that bought the rights, either Lausanne in the case of the TOP sponsors or the first tier sponsors from LOCOG and so we have looked to that group who wish, in addition to have the benefit of the rights, also to fund and support the athletes. So it is a completely different market than the 100 million market that the government will be targeting because they have no rights to sell. Q239 Mr Hall: What about UK Sports though? I am not quite getting my head around this. Clive Woodward's programme is £150,000 per elite athlete, UK Sport's is £75,000; it is not the same amount of money and it is not the same athletes, but yet it is a complementary programme. Mr Clegg: We are looking to work with a very small number of athletes, though of course the World Class Performance Plan goes over all of the summer sports in the programme, all 26, and goes through a number of levels as well. We are looking to work with absolutely the athletes that we believe will be on the podium in 2012 because I think we need to be very clear that generally speaking the man or the woman on the streets of this country would judge the success of the Games in London not by how efficient the transport runs in London, not by how beautifully architecturally designed the stadiums are but by how many British athletes stand on the podium with medals round their neck. That is a very serious responsibility that we at the British Olympic Association shoulder and we need to work, as we are working, in very close collaboration with the government agency to ensure that every athlete, as I keep saying, is given the opportunity of reaching their full potential. Lord Moynihan: It is complementary and it is additive. What you are doing is having a strong programme through a governing body for an individual athlete, through the UK Sport programme, and then over and above that a support mechanism of Clive Woodward's programme, which they would not have if Clive Woodward's programme did not exist. So the reason why the Australians have recently responded by looking with a degree of envy at this additional programme is because nowhere amongst the national Olympic committees that I have discussed is there a programme that is so comprehensively focused right at the top, which effectively removes in many respects the potential for losing. It risks away, this programme, the elements which cause greater uncertainty about an athlete's performance at the very top level. It is highly scientific; it is wholly complementary to the overall funding of the sports, a point that has been looked at by the Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, on three occasions with Clive Woodward when he is presented to Gerry Sutcliffe; a point that has been recognised and supported by UK Sport when they were present in the form of their Chair at the launch of the Woodward programme recently. And it is a very specific programme for looking at the athletes who we are expecting to deliver gold and to de-risk the chances that they will not deliver gold, and I would welcome Members of the Committee at some stage to have a presentation from Clive Woodward and come over and see him working with one or two of the sports so that you can see how this works in practice. I think that it might be of great interest to you and we would be more than happy to organisation that possibly with the first sport that he is going to be working with, namely judo. Q240 Mr Hall: I am familiar with Sir Clive's approach and I fully approve it and we have to be very, very concentrated on those athletes that are going to perform in 2012. Does that mean that are looking at 12-year old gymnasts? Mr Clegg: The programme, as I am sure you have read and indeed is in the written submission that we have provided to you, over the last 12 months has been developed with someone outside of the Olympic family, a lady golfer. Clive is now working with the support and agreement of UK Sport exclusively with a judo player, Ewen Burton, based up in Scotland, and based upon the outcome of this next phase of the development of the programme we will then roll it into the other sports. As a result of our launch Clive now has 15 performance directors who have rung him up over the last couple of weeks and has meetings in the diary with 15 different performance directors in January and February. So the intention is that this programme will roll out with the support - and this is absolutely fundamental because we are a service provider and we do not dictate to our governing bodies - of the performance director, with the support of the governing bodies, and it will be different for every single sport. What we will do is to identify people who we collectively believe have the potential to be on the podium in 2012. It is going to be a very, very tight programme. Q241 Mr Hall: You alluded to this in an earlier answer that we have some sports where I think we perform superbly well - we over-perform probably - cycling and rowing to give you two examples. Sir Clive Woodward said that we have some sports that do not need any input whatsoever and others that need cranking up. Is there anything else that you would add to the list of those that need cranking up? You have mentioned the martial arts. Mr Clegg: Of course, we would aspire to have all 26 sports at the same standard as sailing and cycling. Clive was with me in Chengdu in China for the sailing test event and he described the preparation and performance structures around the sailing fraternity of the British Team as being "Formula 1" class. That is really the challenge for us over the next five years, given this wonderful opportunity of staging the Olympic Games in London in 2012, for us to work with our governing bodies to get them to that standard. Therefore, really there are only a very, very small number of sports, who I believe and who Clive believes, that we have very little of his programme would be of benefit to them. Lord Moynihan: This is one of the services that we are providing to the Olympic governing bodies. Another is to help the governing bodies themselves be absolutely professional in everything they do, and to achieve that what we have done is spoken to top FTSE companies and we have partnered top British companies with each of the governing bodies without any accountability of report writing, for example; but the opportunity for a top company such as British Airways and Snow Sport - and we are talking a lot about the summer games at the moment - and they have built a relationship to identify ways in which British Airways can directly assist Snow Sport deliver better services to the individual athletes. Right across the Olympic sports we are finding these one-to-one relationships really deliver results as a result of a much more professional approach to what are effectively organisations which need to be world leading organisations - those governing bodies need to be the best in the world and aspire to be the best in the world in delivering services. And to that end to have the benefit of working with leading British companies who are out there competing in a global market has been an enormous help already to those governing bodies that created those partnerships. But just as with the Woodward initiative so with the FTSE initiative. These are services, the Olympic governing bodies do not need to take them; they can if they wish, and if they wish to benefit from receiving those services from the British Olympic Association we stand ready to support them as best we can. Mr Lane: Could I make a fundamental distinction here between the Olympic and the Paralympic, and I applaud the efforts that my Lord Moynihan and Simon have put in place in order to achieve potential success for the athletes, but it is a very, very different picture in Paralympic sport and I think it is important that the Select Committee understands that. We are not talking about investment here in elite athletes making that significant difference, what we are actually looking at is investment in the pathway because there is a paucity of young talent coming through in the development of potential pipeline, unlike the Olympic one where investment has been able to build on years of tradition and success. There is very little going on in schools for young athletes; there are very few sports which have developed long-term development programmes for athletes, and in fact the British Paralympic Association has taken it upon themselves to try and introduce some structure into this. You may well be aware of a programme called Parasport, which we have developed with Deloittes, which is designed to give young people and those acquiring disabilities opportunities to get involved in sport and to direct them to both the clubs and the level of support that they need. We are having some success in talking to the Youth Sport Trust about the schools programmes through the PESCAL programme but that is very early days yet and the impact of that is liable to go way past Beijing and possibly even past 2012 before it achieves any success. Sport England too are still in a difficult position in terms of their support for athletes with a disability, and only at this stage are we beginning to get some clarity about their position. So we certainly welcome what Simon has put in place. With Clive, I have talked to Clive about how that might apply to some of our athletes and certainly welcome his interest in sharing that with us, but there is a very more fundamental position that needs to be looked at in terms of the Paralympics otherwise achieving second place or first place in 2012, whichever target is ultimately agreed upon, is likely to be very, very difficult and remote. Q242 Rosemary McKenna: On that specific issue is this a by-product of the fact that we now try and put people with disabilities into mainstream education rather than specific special schools - an unintentional by product? Mr Lane: I think you are right; it is an unintentional by product. We would wholeheartedly - and I am an educationalist myself, a former head teacher. Q243 Rosemary McKenna: Yes, I am too. Mr Lane: I would support the principle wholeheartedly of youngsters with disabilities being in mainstream schools where they are able to work alongside their peers, but the upshot of that is of course that preparation for their sport and physical education has not been at a commensurate level to their academic education. Therefore, youngsters are really dispersed over 26,000 schools as opposed to perhaps 500 special schools and are now finding great difficulty in finding the potential roots into the sport that they want to participate in, and more particularly to find the level of coaching and support they need to become high performance athletes. Chairman: Paul Farrelly. Q244 Paul Farrelly: Just on that point, Mr Lane, the first person at my surgery on Saturday was a representative of Deaf for Athletics. Where do people fall between two stools of able-bodied, if you will pardon the paraphrase and Paralympics? He was looking for some sponsorship to take a team of ten to Deaflympics in Munich. Where do these people stand and how can they get support? Mr Lane: Deaflympics is a separate category, it is not in the Paralympics; they have their own organisation like Special Olympics and their own competitions. They do have, as you say, a Deaflympics which happens every four years or so, which mirrors what goes on in the Paralympic Games. Regrettably it is not funded as an elite competition therefore they struggle to get investment from the Sports Councils within the UK, and that is a real challenge for them. I think it is regrettable because I do think they should be treated equitably in that case alongside our Paralympic athletes and so on. But that is the position that currently pertains. Q245 Paul Farrelly: I will take it up on his behalf. Lord Moynihan, the conversations about Sir Clive and his more recent experience at Southampton, just begged that old chestnut of a question from of where do we stand on entering an Olympics football team at the moment? Lord Moynihan: Very quickly, then, we would hope to enter both a men's and women's team for 2012. Mr Lane: Can I say that there will be a Paralympic British team in Cerebral Palsy Soccer and Blind Soccer. We grasped the nettle. Q246 Chairman: Sir Clive will be coaching it. Mr Lane: We hope Clive will lend us some support. Lord Moynihan: There is a very close relationship, you will be pleased to learn, between the BPA and the BOA and we certainly will exchange services where it is to the mutual benefit of both organisations. Q247 Chairman: We only have a very short time to go. Christine Ohuruogu. For the third time in which you have overturned your automatic lifetime ban policy. Do you think it is now time you revisited the policy? Mr Clegg: Obviously I cannot talk about the specifics of the case particularly since we have not yet received the reasoned judgment. What I would say, Chairman, in response to that is that the British Olympic Association brought in its automatic bylaw to take the moral high ground and to send a very strong message to athletes that we would not tolerate performance enhancing drugs. Interestingly enough, under the Chairmanship of the late Sir Arthur Gold, when this was introduced it was introduced as a result of direct pressure from the British Olympic Athletes Commission, who wanted to compete on a level playing field. Of course, the whole issue of missed whereabouts tests, at that stage was not party to the whole testing regime and obviously that is only come about recently whereby three missed tests constitute a doping offence and as a result an athlete falls short of our bylaw and has to appeal. I think the Chairman will talk about the Anti-Doping Commission that he has established that will be looking at all anti-doping matters, but all I will say is that we constantly keep the bylaw under review and once we receive the reasoned judgment on the Christine Ohuruogu case we will constantly reappraise where we are at. Q248 Chairman: So UK Sport's suggestion that you should refine it so that the ban is only imposed in the case of a serious offence, that is something you will look at? Lord Moynihan: The British Olympic Association's Anti-Doping Commission will certainly look at any representations from UK Sport and we are spending the first three to four months really collating a great deal of international information through our Secretariat on the anti-doping policies around the world. The landscape is shifting rapidly and we do need to review our bylaws in the context of that and indeed in the context of the IOC's proposed changes post-Beijing. So the answer to your question, Chairman, is yes. Chairman: Lastly, Paul Farrelly. Q249 Paul Farrelly: My Lord Moynihan, you recently criticised the financial management of the 2012 Games and in particular the information that you were receiving from the ODA. What is your current position on the financial information that you are getting from them to conduct your oversight role? Lord Moynihan: I think to be fair my comments were about the provision of financial information to the Olympic Board and that is provided to the Olympic Board by the Olympic Board Secretariat. I very much take the view that as one of the four members of that Board it is vitally important that we have a clear view of the budget, a clear view of the cash flow - as you know; the cash flow tells you a lot about what is happening and what is not happening. We need a breakdown of that budget in detail to project elements and we need the contingency allocated to those projects, not least because the contingency allocation will allow a sensible risk analysis to be made to which parts of the overall project are on time, on budget, likely to be under pressures for whatever reason, and members of the Board can then ask questions of the Olympic Board Secretariat or indeed of the Olympics Minister, which is our function. The reason why it is so important for the British Olympic Association needs to be set in context. We need to look after the interests of sport and recreation, particularly Olympic sport and recreation. The Olympic sports legacy to us is vitally important; it is part of our mandate from the Olympic Charter; it is part of our responsibility. Unless we can undertake a comparative analysis of how much money is being spent on the Olympic sports legacy is it wise that money is being spent in that direction rather than on an infrastructure spend? We are simply not in a position to argue that case. So it is very important that that information is made available and yes, I have, over a period of months during the summer and early autumn, requested more detailed information in an interview with Mr Bond and also highlighted the importance of making sure that we have that information. I was pleased that the Olympics Minister responded in the way she did. She has made it very clear that the January board will be in receipt of the information that I have just requested as being important and requested at an earlier stage. I hear today from my colleagues from the ODA that they are anticipating that it would be rather sooner than January - a fortnight if I was not mistaken. Q250 Paul Farrelly: Two weeks. Lord Moynihan: Which I welcome - this will give me a lot of material over the Christmas break - in order to undertake that comparative analysis. But is vitally important. We need to look not just from the BOA's point of view at the funding of the team; we need to make sure that the oversight role that we represent as one of the members of the Olympic Board can be undertaken comprehensively and professionally and we need to be able to argue the case that there is a strong Olympics sports legacy which achieves what Lord Coe set out when he talked about touching the lives of young people throughout the United Kingdom is very much part of hosting the Olympic Games in London 2012. Rosemary McKenna in her earlier comments highlighted the importance of that in the nations and regions. It is vitally important that the Olympics sports legacy reflects that. If I may conclude by saying that at the announcement that was made recently about the sustainability programme, it was equally made clear the Mayor would be providing a sports legacy programme for London; that the Olympics Minister would be providing an Olympics sports legacy programme nationwide and that Sport England will also be undertaking that, although I understand from recent announcements that that may be delayed a few months. The importance of those three documents cannot be over-estimated and we at the British Olympic Association with the agreement of the other members of the Olympic Board will be reviewing those documents in a public engagement which will also include not just those documents but, as we move towards an election, no doubt we will be looking to seek the support of all parties for the objectives that the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out two years ago in what is now termed his Olympics Manifesto, which we fully applauded and which we need to see delivered. But we need it to be delivered not just as a series of promises but costed promises against a budget which is deliverable on a timescale which we can all look at and hopefully all applaud and work together to achieve as a real legacy for hosting the Olympic Games in 2012, so it is well beyond the Olympic Park. Q251 Paul Farrelly: To be quite clear, in terms of the breakdown of the budgets, the projected cash flow and the allocation of contingency you are in the same position as this Committee and still waiting for the information. Lord Moynihan: The information is due to be forthcoming in January but, as we heard today, it may be a little earlier, yes. Chairman: Can I thank you very much. |