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Lord Avebury: My Lords, Part 2 of Schedule 9 applies new provisions on bail to proceedings before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. SIAC frequently deals with persons detained by administrative fiat under high-security conditions without a time limit and without being brought automatically before a court, in conditions normally reserved for persons serving long sentences for criminal offences. Yet those appearing before SIAC have not been convicted of any offence at all.

As I hope to demonstrate in a moment, it is a matter of settled law that the alternatives to a bail hearing—that is, an application for habeas corpus or a judicial review of the lawfulness of detention—are insufficient in cases before SIAC to comply with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights: the right to liberty and security of person. That article provides:

“Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful”.

The Government’s justification in the Home Office’s memorandum on SIAC and the ECHR is that the power to grant bail is limited rather than removed and that the Secretary of State has discretion over bail in certain circumstances, but the Secretary of State is not a court of law for the purpose of Article 5(4) and the question is therefore whether JR and habeas corpus are sufficient for the purpose of compliance. In Chahal v United Kingdom in 1996, 23 EHRR 188, paragraphs 58 to 61, the European Court of Human Rights held that neither judicial review nor habeas corpus provided an adequate basis for challenging a deportation on national security grounds because closed material could not be disclosed in those proceedings. These principles can be applied to challenging a decision to detain. The High Court would not be able to undertake a full review of the lawfulness of the detention sufficient to comply with the conditions of Article 5(4). That point is not addressed in the government briefing, which assumes without argument that judicial review and habeas corpus provide adequate remedies. We know that this concern has been drawn to the attention of the Home Office, and we therefore expect a full reply from my noble friend. I beg to move.

6 pm

Lord Pannick: My Lords, I offer my support to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on Amendment 84A. As he said, the Committee will recognise the importance of the right to bail, particularly in relation to persons who have not been convicted of any criminal offence and who are often detained for lengthy periods.

I ask the Minister whether proposed new subsection (5A) is being brought forward to address a practical problem. How often are applications being made within the 28-day period, and with what result? I am concerned about proposed new subsection (5A) because it is not difficult to envisage cases where it may well be appropriate to bring a further bail application

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within the 28-day period, even if there is no “material change in circumstances”, the criterion in proposed new subsection (5A).

Suppose, for example, that a bail application has been dismissed because of the incompetence of the legal advisers—sadly, in this context, as in others, that is far from a hypothetical contingency. Suppose that the individual concerned lacks proper legal advice when the bail application is made. New solicitors may be appointed, a friend may be assisting the individual, they may be able to present a bail application differently or they may have discovered a binding Court of Appeal judgment which, hitherto, escaped attention. None of that would be a material change in circumstances, as I understand the concept, but it would surely be highly undesirable for the detainee to have to wait for 28 days before an application for bail could be heard and ordered, if it is appropriate on the facts of the detainee’s case.

I hope that the Minister will therefore be able to tell the Committee that he is prepared to think again on this important matter before Report.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate my noble friend’s amendment because it provides me with the opportunity to reassure noble Lords that the safeguards we highlighted when we debated Clause 3 in terms of the Home Office’s process and policy, common law and case law protections and, indeed, judicial oversight are in place when immigration bail applications are considered by SIAC. The power to detain under immigration powers flows from the Immigration Act 1971, and the consideration of whether detention remains lawful is governed by exactly the same legal principles. It is simply the venue that is different: SIAC, instead of the immigration tribunal. SIAC has its own procedure rules, separate from the tribunal procedure rules, and paragraph 2 of Schedule 9 requires SIAC’s rules to mirror those of the tribunal in how repeat bail applications made within 28 days should be handled in cases where there has not been a material change in circumstances. My noble friend’s Amendment 84A would remove the requirement for SIAC to dispose of repeat applications made on the same facts within 28 days without a hearing. That would create disparity between how different tribunals are required to handle the same matter.

As will be the case in the immigration tribunal, if a further bail application is made within 28 days of a previous unsuccessful bail application, SIAC can agree to an oral hearing, provided that there are genuine reasons to seek another hearing because there are materially different grounds to consider which may lead to a different outcome.

As I have said, safeguards are already in place. Clause 3 does not prevent an individual from applying for bail. Nor does it prevent an individual from challenging the legality of their detention, and legal aid will remain available for that. The Home Office will continue to conduct formal reviews of detention, and detainees will continue to have full access to legal advice.

I have been asked how many times the existing power has been used. The existing power has not been used for some time, so the Government have no statistics on its use. It is drafted so broadly that its meaning is,

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arguably, unclear. The government amendment is clear about the circumstances in which the power can be exercised and is proportionate. Therefore, it is more workable.

My noble friend Lord Avebury asked about judicial review and habeas corpus and their relationship with SIAC. He suggested that they were not adequate in SIAC. I hope that I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the position in SIAC differs from the position in the tribunal. SIAC is a superior court of record, whereas the tribunal, which considers most bail applications, is not. In SIAC bail applications, SIAC does consider the lawfulness of detention, and detainees do not have to apply for JR or habeas corpus, although those options remain open to them should they wish to do so.

I hope that I have covered the salient points made by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I understand that my noble friend’s amendment was probing. I therefore hope that my comments have reassured the noble Lords that there is no difference in the policy, procedural or judicial protections that those detained under immigration powers enjoy even if the case is under SIAC’s jurisdiction rather than that of the immigration tribunal. I therefore ask that my noble friend withdraw his amendment.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, I understood on good legal advice that the principles in Chahal did read across to SIAC but in view of what my noble friend has said about that, I shall go back to my advisers and see whether they have any further comments on what he has said.

Perhaps I may make an aside about this amendment and others that we have dealt with today. It is very inconvenient, when looking up the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act or any other Acts to which amendments are being made by the Bill, to find at the head of each page in the version that we can see online that it cannot be guaranteed that all the amendments which have been made to that Act have been incorporated. This is a serious disadvantage because it means that we always have to go back to the Library, which has access to another database that contains the full Keeling schedules of Acts that have been amended. Normally, people using the parliamentary website cannot see that database and that causes some considerable inconvenience. I would be grateful if my noble friend could address that point at some stage in the future. I do not ask him to give me a reply now but this is a general disadvantage to people who are trying to work on these Bills which work by reference to other legislation. However, with those words I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 84A withdrawn.

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Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (c. 33)

(1) The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 is amended as follows.

(2) In Schedule 11 (detainee custody officers)—

(a) in the heading above paragraph 3, at the end insert “and pre-departure accommodation”;

(b) in paragraph 3—

(i) in sub-paragraph (1), after “facility” insert “or in pre-departure accommodation”;

(ii) in sub-paragraph (2), after “facility” (in both places) insert “or accommodation”;

(c) in paragraph 4(c), after “facility” insert “or in pre- departure accommodation”;

(d) in paragraph 5(c), after “facility” insert “or in pre- departure accommodation”.

(3) In Schedule 12 (discipline etc at removal centres)—

(a) in paragraph 4 (assisting detained persons to escape)—

(i) in sub-paragraph (1), for “or short-term holding facility” substitute “, a short-term holding facility or pre-departure accommodation”;

(ii) in the opening words of sub-paragraph (2), for “or short-term holding facility” substitute “, a short-term holding facility or pre-departure accommodation”;

(iii) in sub-paragraph (2)(a), for “or facility” substitute “, facility or accommodation”;

(iv) in sub-paragraph (2)(b), for “or facility” substitute “, facility or accommodation”;

(v) in sub-paragraph (2)(c), for “or facility” substitute “, facility or accommodation”;

(b) in paragraph 8 (notice of penalties)—

(i) in sub-paragraph (1), after “facility” insert “or contracted out pre-departure accommodation”;

(ii) in sub-paragraph (2), after “facility” insert “or pre-departure accommodation”.”

Amendments 85 to 87 agreed.

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Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 87ZE and 87ZF. The first of my amendments would introduce two new paragraphs to ensure that leave continues in the event of revocation on the terms and conditions which have applied while an asylum or human rights appeal is pending. The Bill does not repeal the provisions for extending leave during the period for lodging an appeal or while an appeal is pending once a decision not to extend leave or to revoke has been made. However, those provisions will not function because the provisions on which they bite are being repealed. I acknowledge readily that this is not my analysis and I am grateful, as so many noble Lords have been and no doubt will be during the course of the Bill, to the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association for this.

I made a point on Amendment 72B on Monday in respect of drivers’ licences but I do not think that the Minister who was replying was able to deal with it. In this situation, it would mean that a person’s presence immediately becomes unlawful, with implications for employment and his employer, education and his university, tenancy, holding a bank account, access to healthcare and so on. I might be wrong about holding a bank account; I think that I mean opening a bank account.

It would also mean that there would be a break in the continuity of his leave, which might have implications for a later application for settlement or citizenship. Schedule 9 provides for leave to continue on the same terms and conditions while an administrative review is pending, so it seems likely that people will make both an application for review and a human rights appeal. There would then be the dual review and appeal—parallel might be a better word—which I know the Government want to avoid. That is my first amendment.

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6.15 pm

The second amendment, Amendment 87ZE, would retain Section 23 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Under that section, the Secretary of State must,

“appoint a person to monitor … refusals of entry clearance in cases where there is … no right of appeal”,

and produce an annual report which is laid before Parliament. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has been carrying out this function when he inspects entry clearance posts abroad. I suppose that this amendment amounts to asking the Minister to confirm whether the chief inspector will have the resources and the power to continue monitoring these posts.

I have been sent a number of extracts from recent reports with regard to overseas posts and I will quote briefly from a couple. Last December, regarding the Dhaka visa section, a report said that,

“sampling identified serious ongoing issues with decision quality”,

and,

“problems with half the cases we examined”,

where the,

“decision-making did not appear to have materially changed since the former Independent Monitor,”

reported five years previously. There was reference to the misinterpretation of evidence, not retaining relevant documentation,

“not recording clear grounds for their decision”,

and,

“refusing applicants for failing to provide information, the need for which they would not have been aware of at the time of making their application”.

Again, in the report on the Warsaw section last December there were references to “poor decision-making” and the need for,

“a robust system of quality control to ensure that flawed decisions are put right before being communicated to applicants”.

I could go on.

The last of my amendments would mean that Section 86(3) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 would not be repealed. Under that subsection, the tribunal must allow an appeal in so far as it thinks that,

“a decision against which the appeal is brought or is treated as being brought was not in accordance with the law”.

Is this actually what we think should become a matter for administrative review? I beg to move.

Baroness Smith of Basildon: My Lords, shall speak briefly on these amendments because I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, quite carefully on them and I share some of the concerns that she raised. Concerning Amendment 87ZA, can I just be 100% sure that I have understood it correctly? The current position is that once a decision is taken not to extend or revoke leave, that leave is extended on the same terms and conditions during the period provided for lodging any appeal or while the appeal is pending. However, the Bill would remove that provision. The noble Baroness is nodding at me, so it seems I have understood it correctly.

Baroness Hamwee: That is as I understand it. Possibly like the noble Baroness, I have had some difficulty following this around the course.

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Baroness Smith of Basildon: I share that difficulty. However, what the Bill does has quite significant implications. If I take the example of somebody who is employing an individual whose leave is revoked and who then appeals, the employer has the opportunity to continue to employ that person quite legally. What is being proposed here seems to make the employer commit an offence, because from the moment that leave is revoked, even if the individual is appealing against it, they are no longer allowed to employ that person. What I come back to on a number of areas in the Bill is the issue of unintended consequences—not thinking through from point A to point B. I may have it completely wrong, and I am happy if I have, but I would like some clarification on that point.

On the other two points, the Minister will be aware of how concerned we are about the Government’s proposals on appeals and administrative reviews. I fail to understand why the Government do not want to have the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration reviewing decisions taken in this case. The noble Baroness asked him to confirm that. An explanation would be quite helpful. The same is true on Amendment 87ZF.

As with so many proposals the Government bring forward, I would like to understand the evidence behind the decisions being taken and an assurance that they understand and know the consequences, including the unintended consequences, of such measures.

The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness) (LD): My Lords, I thank my noble friend for moving this amendment and confessing, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to having difficulty getting her head around some of this. Having had this landed on me very recently, I have similar issues.

Baroness Smith of Basildon: It makes no difference. We spent weeks on this.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness: I am advised that it is not correct that this Bill means that leave does not continue where an application has been made in time. I think there is a double negative in there. My understanding is that Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 provides that where someone makes an application for further leave while they have existing leave and that the existing leave expires before the application for further leave is decided, their existing leave is extended on the same terms until that further application is decided and any appeal against its refusal is no longer pending. That is the existing position. Section 3D of the 1971 Act makes the same provision where someone has existing leave which is revoked, extending leave while they can appeal against the revocation. Schedule 9 to this Bill amends Sections 3C and 3D so that they extend leave also while an administrative review can be brought or is pending. I hope that is helpful. No doubt the noble Baronesses will want to consider it. I think that is the accurate position.

Nothing in the Bill prevents people making protection or human rights claims. We are committed to protecting such fundamental rights but equally, as has been explained on numerous occasions in Committee, we also seek to

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prevent abuse of the system and to create an improved process. Our concern is that the amendment that my noble friend has moved would undermine both these aims.

Extending leave because a protection or human rights claim has been made following an unsuccessful administrative review would create a strong incentive to make such claims. This would undermine the greater efficiency of the appeals framework in this Bill. There would be an advantage in making a protection or human rights claim just before leave extended under Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 expired, even after an appeal at the First-tier Tribunal has been decided. This would create a sequential process where the further claim and any appeal are considered after the other claim has been decided rather than at the same time. It would mean that leave is extended on current conditions for a worker, even when that worker has first sought an extension of leave as a worker and then decides he no longer wants to be in the UK to work but rather wishes to claim asylum. We do not believe that that consequential inconsistency is right.

Inserting new Section 3F into the Immigration Act 1971, as proposed by Amendment 87ZA, would create duplication. Existing Section 3D of the 1971 Act already provides that where leave is revoked, the leave will continue while any appeal against revocation is brought.

I wish to make the important point that, as I said at the outset, there is nothing in the Bill that seeks to stop or prevent people making protection or human rights claims. The Home Secretary will consider and decide any human rights claim made to her and will not remove any person while that claim remains undecided, irrespective of whether they have leave. I hope that is a reassurance that there will not be a removal while a claim remains undecided.

Amendment 87ZE queries the necessity of a consequential appeals amendment. We believe that the consequential amendment is necessary. Schedule 9 repeals the provision establishing a monitor for entry clearance cases with a limited right of appeal. This monitor role is now performed by the independent chief inspector under Section 48 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. However, the Bill provides that there will no longer be any entry clearance cases with a limited right of appeal, and therefore Amendment 87ZE would retain an otherwise redundant provision.

With regard to Amendment 87ZF, the Bill simplifies the appeals framework and removes “not in accordance with the law” and “different exercise of discretion” as grounds on which appeals can be brought. Amendment 87ZF would reinstate these as reasons for allowing an appeal, although they are not grounds on which an appeal can be brought. Noble Lords will recall from when we debated Clause 11 that the grounds of appeal under that clause are that a decision breaches the UK’s obligations under the refugee convention to those entitled to humanitarian protection, or is unlawful under the Human Rights Act. These are the relevant grounds for challenging refusals of protection or human rights claims, and, in considering them, the tribunal is considering whether the decision was in accordance

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with the law. That is the important point in the appeal. Similarly, the UK’s obligations to asylum seekers entitled to humanitarian protection or under the Human Rights Act are not discretionary. There is therefore no exercise of discretion for the tribunal to consider in those appeals that come before it.

I hope that in the light of this explanation and these reassurances, my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, it would be foolish of me to try to continue the debate at this point. I obviously need to read—probably several times—what my noble friend just said and to consider it with those who are far more familiar with the whole raft of immigration legislation than I am. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 87ZA withdrawn.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, Amendment 87ZB would retain Section 40A(3)(a) of the British Nationality Act 1981. This provision can be used by an immigration judge hearing an appeal against deprivation of nationality to direct, following a successful appeal, that an order depriving a person of his or her British nationality is to be treated as having had no effect. I think what my noble and learned friend said in response to Amendment 84A is relevant to this provision because he said that it is no longer necessary for immigration judges to have these powers of direction.

Amendment 87ZC would retain Section 2(6) of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, which states:

“In this section ‘immigration decision’ has the meaning given by section 82(2) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002”.

It would thus be consequential upon leaving Clause 11 out of the Bill so that the existing Section 82(2) was preserved. As matters stand, Clause 11 removes the list of immigration decisions in Section 82(1) against which Section 82(2) gives a right of appeal.

Amendment 87ZCA amends Section 2B of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997, which reads:

“A person may appeal to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission against a decision to make an order under section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981 (c. 61) (deprivation of citizenship) if he is not entitled to appeal under section 40A(1) of that Act because of a certificate under section 40A(2) (and section 40A(3)(a) shall have effect in relation to appeals under this section)”.

It is the cross-reference to the provision that Amendment 87ZB seeks to retain.

These amendments arise from the case of Hilal Al-Jedda, which was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, on Monday. Mr Al-Jedda, originally an Iraqi citizen, sought asylum in the UK in 1992. He obtained refugee status in 1994, ILR in 1998 and UK citizenship in June 2000. Then, in June 2004, he was detained in Baghdad as a suspected member of a terrorist group

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and was held without trial at a camp in Basra for the next three years. At the end of that period, it was discovered that he was a UK citizen. On 13 December 2007, he was released from detention and went to live in Turkey, where he remains to this date. Towards the end of his detention, the Secretary of State wrote to Mr Al-Jedda, saying that she was minded to make an order depriving him of his citizenship under Section 42 of the British Nationality Act, as well as excluding him from the UK, and inviting him to make any representations he chose against the order. His solicitors replied that he wished to challenge the order but, to do so, they required details of the facts on the basis of which he was suspected of terrorism. The Secretary of State declined to give that information and proceeded to make the order on 14 December 2007.

6.30 pm

In the course of this correspondence, neither the Home Secretary nor Mr Al-Jedda’s solicitors referred to Section 40(4) of the British Nationality Act, which provides that:

“The Secretary of State may not make an order under subsection (2) if he is satisfied that the order would make a person stateless”.

It later transpired that the Home Secretary has been working on the assumption that Mr Al-Jedda had reverted to his previous nationality, even though an Iraqi who takes any foreign citizenship automatically loses his Iraqi citizenship. Her view was confirmed by SIAC when Mr Al-Jedda appealed to it in July 2010, but that was overturned by the Court of Appeal and remitted again to SIAC. SIAC reaffirmed its original decision, as did the Court of Appeal for a second time. The Secretary of State then appealed to the Supreme Court, where she argued that she could be satisfied that making the order would not make the person stateless if he had another nationality option, and that in this case Mr Al-Jedda could have applied for a resumption of his Iraqi citizenship which would have been granted. This was a wholly spurious argument, because Section 40(4) of the British Nationality Act refers to a person’s situation immediately the order has been made and not to what it might be at some time in the future when the stateless person had taken specific steps and the country of his former nationality had hypothetically responded favourably to them.

Lord Justice Richards said in the Court of Appeal that the point was,

“by no means free from doubt”.

As a stateless person living in Turkey, Mr Al-Jedda would have had to apply to the Iraqi authorities for a visa to re-enter the country to make the application for citizenship in person and, if he got that far, he could have been refused on security grounds. What it boiled down to was not arcane speculation about what might happen in a country still recovering from dictatorship and war, however, but what Mr Al-Jedda’s position was, immediately an order was made.

As to the circumstances which led up to the deprivation, the Supreme Court held that Section 40(4),

“does not permit, still less require, analysis of the causative factors”.

The inquiry the Secretary of State needs to make is a straightforward exercise to determine whether the person holds another nationality at the date of the order.

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Now, clearly, the Secretary of State, having been forced to recognise the “fallacy behind her appeal”, as the Supreme Court described it, decided to change the law to make it possible to deprive people of their UK citizenship even when that means that they will become stateless. In my noble friend the Minister’s letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, chair of the Select Committee on the Constitution, he says:

“We are legislating to correct the anomaly between what we do with regard to statelessness and what we are required to do in international law”.

It seems that there is no express contravention of international law in what the Government are doing, because when we signed up to the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness we entered a reservation that allowed us to deprive a naturalised person of his nationality on grounds that are broadly similar to those in Clause 60. But, as Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, counsel in the Al-Jedda case, observes, there are both domestic and international human rights implications. If the person is in this country when the order takes effect, he might be given limited leave to remain, with conditions regarding access to public funds and the right to work or study, though it is clearly the intention to remove him to his country of origin if that is possible. In the Minister’s letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, he says again that we may grant leave to those persons, on conditions analogous to those of other migrants with temporary leave. Family members who are UK citizens will not be deprived of their rights, but what access will they have, for instance, to public funds? Will they be treated as if they were dependants of a citizen, or would they suffer financial and other penalties as a result of their relationship with the person being deprived of his citizenship? What will be their position if they are not UK citizens—for example, if the spouses and children of that person were from the country of origin and still awaiting indefinite leave to remain?

Where the person is not in the UK, such as Mr Al-Jedda with his wife and eight children, do we expect the other country to look after him for the rest of his life? He entered Turkey on a false passport and is therefore presumably not eligible to work—if indeed he can speak Turkish and has skills that would be useful to a Turkish employer. I suppose that as long as the Turkish authorities are not protesting we can say that it is not a matter of any concern to us how Mr Al-Jedda and his family survive, though some of his children are probably British citizens.

Other countries may not be so complacent when we dump our unwanted citizens on them. As another example, Abu Hamza, who served a seven-year prison sentence here for terrorist offences, was subsequently extradited to the US where he is now in custody awaiting trial on further terrorist offences. If he is acquitted, or if he is convicted and serves his time there, would the US authorities be happy to keep him and to accept that he was no longer returnable to the United Kingdom? They would surely argue that he had been admitted on extradition as a British citizen and it is likely that he travelled with a British passport. The US would be entitled to rely on those facts and the applicable international law when pressing the UK to take him back.

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The Minister was asked how many of the people who have been deprived of their citizenship so far under the existing law were in fact abroad at the time at which it took place. He dodged that question when it was last asked. It is important that we should know the answer to it this evening.

As we have been told, there are probably going to be only a handful of people affected by these provisions, but what is far worse even than the effects on those few individuals and their families is the appalling example we are setting to the rest of the world. Britain was in the forefront in promoting the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and has since worked to reduce the pockets of statelessness that still exist all over the world, such as the Bidoon in the Gulf states, the Rohingya and the Palestinians. How can we now pretend to a share in the leadership of the UNHCR’s continuing effort to eliminate statelessness when, at the same time, we are enacting domestic legislation to create more stateless people? I beg to move.

Lord Deben (Con): My Lords, I suddenly thought that the court which heard St Paul declare himself a Roman citizen must have been just as surprised as we are at some of the people who claim to be British citizens, both by name or background and present place of abode. Your Lordships will remember that St Paul made an important and entirely supported point. Having declared himself a Roman citizen, he was treated in a different way. We have an important point here, and I commend my noble friend Lord Avebury in raising it. This is a very difficult area, not least because the exemplars are not ones that are easily taken to the heart of the broad mass of the British people. That means that those people should be particularly able to call upon this House.

I live in a house which was previously occupied, a long time ago, by the man who won the War of Jenkins’ Ear—the Battle of Porto Bello. At that time we thought that British citizenship was of enormous importance. People who found it quite hard to explain how they had managed to become British citizens were still supported, sometimes for pretty dubious reasons.

I hope that my noble friend will consider very carefully the points which the noble Lord has made. We live in a world in which statelessness is one of the most terrible things that can befall anyone. If you do not belong and cannot come to belong, you are placed in an impossible position. In a sense I welcome that this is so peculiar. This so special a situation which has been adumbrated, and the others around it are small in number and, as I suggested, do not affect many people or raise their sympathy in this country. Indeed, I fear that they could easily be used by some organs of the press as another way to beat the Government on their immigration policy. That makes it all the more important that we are very serious about this.

I therefore hope that my noble friend, in expressing his view on this amendment, will reassure the House that we do three things which are basic to British justice. First, we will recognise that if we have granted citizenship, or if someone has citizenship, we will defend it, and do so even though it be to our own

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hindrance. Secondly, we will not continue, unless there is some really good reason, the unacceptable position in which we say to somebody, “We will take away your citizenship but will not tell you why”. I find that unacceptable. I can see why people do that, but the circumstances must be most extreme before it is reasonable and acceptable. Thirdly, to take away someone’s citizenship, it is not reasonable to say that you assume that they can get another country’s citizenship. It is only reasonable to say that you know that they have another citizenship; anything less than that is wrong. It may not be convenient, but it is not right.

We have been the signatory to and the driver of much of the international law that seeks to reduce statelessness to its minimum. I fear that in this particular case, we may, for very good reasons—in seeking to close loopholes and make neat what is essentially a not very neat kind of law—do something which will do great injustice to a very small number of people. However, it is none the less injustice if it affects but one.

Baroness Smith of Basildon: My Lords, I will be brief, because I do not want to repeat the lengthy debate we had on this issue on Monday evening. That the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has raised this again tonight, as well as the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, indicates the strength of feeling and the very grave concerns about the Government’s provisions, which would make stateless some people in this country who are currently citizens. The issue was never, as the noble Lord perhaps thought on Monday, about the withdrawal and deprivation of citizenship, but about the consequences of making people stateless, not just for that individual but for public safety, national and international security. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, made the point about somebody either being trapped, stateless, in this country, and our obligation to that individual, or somebody being isolated overseas, with the implications that that has for the security of that country and our relationship with it.

6.45 pm

I asked a number of questions on Monday, not to be difficult or to try to trick the Minister in any way at all, but because of a lack of comprehension about the consequences this would cause. Most of those questions were not answered; the noble Lord essentially apologised to me on the Floor of the House for not being able to answer all the questions, but perhaps the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, will be able to answer some of them this evening. Perhaps he could address in particular the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the number of those who have had their citizenship withdrawn when they were out of the country and therefore remain stateless while they are out of the country; that number would be useful.

A very important point was also made about the discussions that the British Government have had with other countries, which may end up having a citizen whom the British Government think is likely to be a terrorist or certainly liable to take action prejudicial to the interests of the UK. We would leave them to try another country, although that person would have

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been accepted into that country because they had a British passport. We have to consider quite seriously the implications for our international relations. I am interested to know what discussions have been had with other countries about those provisions, because there was no answer to that on Monday. If the noble and learned Lord is unable to answer tonight, I will in any case meet the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who has agreed to do so. However, if we could have some answers to those questions tonight, that would be very useful for our understanding of the Government’s reasons for including this clause, with its very serious implications.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness: My Lords, important points have been made in this debate, following on from the debate which took place in Committee on Monday on the issues of deprivation of citizenship and statelessness. My noble friend Lord Deben has reminded us of important things: “Civis Romanus sum, civis Britannicus sum”. This is of great seriousness, and in no way do I wish to detract from the seriousness of these matters, to which I am sure the House will inevitably return on Report. Neither do I wish to try to dodge the question the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked, by looking at the amendment. The amendment does not raise these profound issues, which as I said, I am sure we will come back to—indeed, she has indicated that she has a meeting with my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach to discuss some of those issues.

The amendment moved by my noble friend relates to part of Schedule 9, entitled “Transitional and consequential provision”, and specifically would omit Section 40A(3)(a) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The point of that omission is that Section 87 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is repealed by paragraph 28 of that schedule. I think that this matter was debated at an earlier stage; my noble friend Lady Hamwee tabled an amendment which sought to reinstate the power of the tribunal to give directions when an appeal succeeds. The point of this amendment is to reinstate this paragraph in relation to a section which relates to the power of a tribunal to give directions following a successful appeal to give effect to its decision. When my noble friend Lady Hamwee raised that issue in an earlier debate, my noble friend explained that that power is no longer necessary, as the range of decisions that the tribunal can make following appeals reform in the Bill will be more limited, and therefore the consequences clearer.

As Section 87 is repealed by virtue of paragraph 28, the reference to Section 87 in the British Nationality Act 1981 is deleted. The consequence of my noble friend’s amendment would be to reinstate a reference to a section of a Bill that has been repealed. If that is what the amendment is about, it is on that basis that we cannot accept it. But that in no way detracts from the seriousness of the points raised, which it is inevitable that we will return to on Report.

Likewise, Amendment 87ZCA seeks to retain a further cross-reference that is redundant following the repeal of Section 87 of the 2002 Act. There is a cross-reference in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997 to the section of the British Nationality Act which refers to Section 87.

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Amendment 87ZC also relates to a change made to existing legislation as a consequence of the changes to appeal rights in Part 2 of this Bill. It would retain a reference to “immigration decision” in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997. This reference should be removed because Clause 11 on rights of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal does not use the term “immigration decision” to describe decisions that can be appealed. Therefore, the terminology is simply inappropriate and wrong.

I apologise to the Committee for a very technical answer to what are, in fact, technical amendments. In doing so, I do not wish in any way to detract from the seriousness and importance of the points that my noble friends and the noble Baroness have made, which I am sure will be the subject of further discussion outside the Chamber and, again, when the House returns to the matter on Report. In the light of those technical explanations, I hope that my noble friend withdraws his amendment.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, in the light of those technical matters, we thought that those amendments were necessary. That is why we still consider that the power of direction of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission should be retained, as we suggested in Amendment 87ZB. As my noble and learned friend says, these are matters to which we shall return, presumably on Report when there is a fuller attendance in your Lordships’ House.

Meanwhile, I should say how grateful I was to my noble friend Lord Deben for his remarks. The same quotation occurred to me as to my noble friend—Lord Palmerston’s famous speech, in which he ended, “Civis Britannicus sum”. It was the case of a person who might not have been considered particularly worthy of British nationality, but he had it, and he was being victimised by the dictators in Naples. We should still be able to say, “Civis Britannicus sum”. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, we should not allow the Secretary of State to take away a person’s citizenship, particularly when, as he pointed out, she does not have to explain why she has done that. He agrees that it should be feasible for her to take away a person’s citizenship only when she knows that the person has another citizenship to turn to.

I am grateful also to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her reference to the consequences of making a person stateless, which go well beyond the individual consequences of the person concerned. We have to think of the influence that that will have on other states that already have persons who are stateless in their community or are contemplating making people stateless; they will look to the British example, and statelessness will thereby be increased across the world. We should not underestimate the influence of a decision by a state such as Britain, which has always been in the forefront of combating statelessness and has now abandoned that stance. So I am sure that we shall return to this matter. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 87ZB withdrawn.

Amendments 87ZC to 87ZJ not moved.

Schedule 9, as amended, agreed.

Clause 67 agreed.

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Clause 68: Commencement

Amendments 87A to 89 not moved.

Clause 68 agreed.

Clauses 69 and 70 agreed.

House resumed.

Bill reported with amendments.

Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee

Motion to Take Note

6.56 pm

Moved by Lord Harris of Haringey

That this House takes note of the Report of the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee.

Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab): My Lords, before we begin tonight’s debate, I express my delight at the calibre of those who have signed up to speak. The entire membership of the committee is participating, which does not surprise me as, throughout what was at times an intense inquiry, their diligence, enthusiasm and expertise helped the committee to get its job done. Even the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, served his time on the committee; our loss was the Government’s gain when he was promoted to the Whips’ Office in October. We are delighted that he will be responding to tonight’s debate. In addition, two valuable witnesses to the inquiry, the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are joining us, along with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, another multiple Paralympic medal winner.

In that context, I should perhaps begin by declaring an interest, or rather a non-interest, in my own rather less than distinguished, not to say non-existent, sporting career. At the age of 12, I was expelled from the PE department of my school—or, as they put it, “Harris is excused games for the rest of his school career”—on the grounds of wilful lack of effort. As noble Lords can see, the rest is history. I stand before you as a nasty warning of what will happen if the Government fail to take our recommendations on school-age sport more seriously.

The committee, which I had the privilege to chair, was appointed in May last year to consider,

“the strategic issues for regeneration and sporting legacy from the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

We were ordered to report by 15 November and, in the event, managed to do so a few days early. This committee was an experiment by the House. Rather than having the full Session to conduct an inquiry into one policy area, this year two committees shared the resources of one to complete two separate inquiries. Suffice it to say, given the breadth of the topic set by our terms of reference, this was a tall order, which we sought to resolve by packing as many witness sessions into six months as most committees would attempt in a year.

Tonight I shall speak to both our report and the joint response to it from the Government and the Mayor of London, which was issued, in my view rather inappropriately, while the Lords was in its February Recess.

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We began our inquiry less than a year after the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games, which I think we all felt was early to try to gauge the legacy. As a result, we did not even attempt to make definitive judgments on what the end results would be but instead concentrated on whether credible arrangements were in place to deliver the maximum possible legacy, once the euphoria of the Games themselves had disappeared. We tried to see the most representative possible range of groups and bodies. We took formal evidence in person from 52 witnesses in Westminster and one in South America —by video conference rather than visit, I hasten to say. We sat for four days during the Recess in September and, importantly, spent one of those days very fruitfully visiting people in the host boroughs. That day included what I am sure was unique—a visitation by your Lordships’ House to an East End boxing club.

The tightness of our timetable meant that our work was necessarily compressed, and that many of our oral submissions had inevitably to take place before we had received the written submissions from the organisations concerned. Like all ad hoc committees of the House, there is an issue over how our report will be followed up. I know that the Liaison Committee is looking at this, but my colleagues and I are, like Barkis in David Copperfield, willing—willing to be recalled to review these issues in the future, should the House so request us to do.

I am grateful to everyone who engaged with the inquiry. Personally, I am indebted to my colleagues on the committee who were, between them, expert in so many aspects of the terms of reference. Our work would not have been possible without the superb support of our clerk team: Duncan Sagar, who has now switched seamlessly to covering modern slavery; Matthew Smith, who switched on the day of the report’s publication from being an expert on urban regeneration to being one on the taxation of personal service companies; and Helena Ali, who has now, I understand, been poached by the House of Commons. We were also ably assisted by our two advisers: Professor Ian Henry and Professor Allan Brimicombe.

The euphoria over the Games was justified. The hosting of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games was an outstanding success. The Games exceeded expectations and confounded sceptics by giving the world a spectacular example of what the United Kingdom is capable of doing, and, what is more, they delivered that major event on time and to budget. The evidence that we took suggested that legacy played a bigger part in the planning of the 2012 Games than for any previous Games and, again, this in itself deserves credit.

At a year’s distance, many of our witnesses argued that it was simply too soon to assess the legacy for the regeneration of east London. This will be seen only over decades and generations. However, the sporting legacy, or perhaps in some instances the lack of it, is easier to assess. The single biggest promise on the sporting side was for a much more physically active population. The UK faces an epidemic of obesity, which, on Budget Day, I should note costs an estimated £20 billion per year, as well as seriously curtailing health and quality of life. The promise of inspiring a new sporting generation was crucial and a tantalising

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part of that legacy aspiration. We found the evidence was pretty clear in this regard and, I have to say, rather disappointing. The envisaged post-Games step change in participation across the United Kingdom and across different sports simply did not materialise. If anything, sporting activity subsequently declined.

There were, of course, some honourable exceptions. Some sports, such as cycling, have used a succession of events and sporting successes, building on the Manchester Commonwealth Games and various victorious Tours de France, to have a really impressive and sustained boost in participation across the country, amplified by the heroics of Victoria Pendleton, Sir Chris Hoy and their teammates in 2012. However, across the board, the picture was one of a lack of legacy planning by sports, particularly for what would happen at grass-roots level. The links between sports governing bodies, the investment from Sport England, and community clubs, schools and facilities, are critical and need more investment. From the Government’s response to our report, it seems that this message is only now beginning to hit home. This may be, tragically, too late to secure a participation legacy from 2012. This was a missed opportunity, and we have to hope that it is not too late to leverage the coming decade of sporting events hosted in the UK, beginning with this summer’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

The Games themselves were also an impressive example of what could be done to inspire volunteers, but here again there was a missed opportunity adequately to harness that enthusiasm. I have spoken to so many of those who were Games makers, who tell me that, with a little more encouragement in the immediate aftermath of the Games, they would have been ready to continue with that level of volunteering commitment.

To try to address these gaps in planning, as well as to ensure that sports governing bodies are reaching out to previously underrepresented groups, we called for more transparency through the publication of the whole sport plans, which each sport produces as a part of Sport England’s funding process. I was disappointed that the Government in their response did not engage with this recommendation positively. I hope that the Minister, when he responds, will give us a reason why these documents should not be put in the public domain.

The Paralympic Games seem to have provided genuine inspiration for more people with and without disabilities to take up sport. However, there are barriers in the quality of the facilities available in clubs, which affect disabled people looking to participate in sport. As well as boosting sporting participation for those with disabilities, an important hoped-for legacy of the Paralympics was the transformation of general public perceptions of disability. Extensive media coverage has certainly had a powerful effect on changing public perceptions of disabled sport. However, I have to say that there is less clear evidence that there was a similar impact on the broader perception of people with disabilities.

The adequate provision of sport for school-age children is essential, coming at that key moment in young people’s lives when an intervention can create lifelong habits and enjoyment of exercise. Our report supported the findings of the recent report for the

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Welsh Assembly by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on sport in schools in Wales, in particular that PE needs a greater emphasis in the school day and that teachers, particularly in primary schools, need the training and skills to teach PE if we are to achieve meaningful progress. Our report called on the Department for Education and Ofsted to take more active roles in making this change happen. The Government’s response, including confirmation that PE will remain compulsory at all four key stages and that Ofsted is emphasising PE skills in new teachers, certainly talks the right talk. It is essential that this translates into meaningful progress.

Turning to high-performance sport, the biggest single controversy was over UK Sport’s “No Compromise” approach to funding, whereby funding is directed at those sports with the best medium-term medal prospects. Because of Team GB’s hosting of the Games, a number of Olympic and Paralympic sports received additional funding so that we could field teams in every event, including those that were not traditionally popular in the UK. Some sports, such as handball and volleyball, really caught the public imagination and had the potential to grow new participation bases on the back of Team GB’s displays. There is no question that the “No Compromise” approach to sports funding has clearly improved the top end of Team GB’s performances in the recent past, and the transformation in medal haul from Atlanta in 1996 to London in 2012 is a staggering achievement. However, we were concerned that it does not sufficiently help emerging sports. There is also a bias against team sports, a point put to us powerfully to in evidence by Sir Clive Woodward. Without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we called for UK Sport to adopt a more flexible approach, which reflects this problem and enables sports to nurture a broader base and a wider pool from which future world-class talent might emerge.

I have been contacted—as, I am sure, have colleagues since the report’s publication by a number of those affected by UK Sport’s recent decisions. One of the most disappointing aspects of the Government’s response was their flat refusal to consider making the process more flexible. Will the Minister confirm whether the door is closed to rethinking the “No Compromise” approach in future? Certainly, today’s funding announcements by UK Sport hardly bode well for future participation in the sports such as basketball that have lost out.

Before turning to the second limb of our inquiry—the regeneration legacy—I want to say a word about the facilities built for the Games and their future use. We searched hard for the white elephants that have been the legacy of so many previous Games and we did not find any. The Olympic stadium itself will not be standing idle and empty but will be the home of West Ham United. That was not the original legacy concept, but it will be used.

Our view was that the stadium is a national asset and it remains important that the focus must be on making the best use of it for the community and the taxpayer. Last week, I met West Ham United, and I recognise the enormous efforts it is making to bring football “back to the people” with its Kids for a Quid scheme, its community sports trust, and its work with

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youngsters to reduce anti-social behaviour and provide out-of-school study support for underachieving children. The arrangements for the stadium’s use when West Ham is not using it must also be focused on delivering community benefit.

It is the local people who should stand to gain most from the legacy of the Games, and it is for this reason that the regeneration of east London was a major part of what was promised. Previous Games and other major sporting events around the world have failed to leave meaningful transformative legacies for local people. We heard from the vice-president of the IOC that regeneration is all about domestic palatability, and the promise to transform the lives and prospects of future generations of east Londoners was the biggest moral case for the Games.

The regeneration of east London is a huge, long-term task with a potentially great reward. The redevelopment of the Olympic park itself is led by the mayor’s London Legacy Development Corporation, or LLDC. We were pleased to find that the park will offer a mix of good-quality, new housing within the former athletes’ village, and in five new neighbourhoods that will be developed across the park. It is important that a fair proportion—at least the LLDC’s target of 35%—of this housing is affordable for, and accessible to, local residents. We recommended that the LLDC should take steps to manage and monitor this. We were a little concerned that, in the mayor’s part of the response to the report, the LLDC seemed to be focused only on affordability and not on the wider questions of suitability. Many local families are relatively large when compared with the UK average, and it is more common in the local communities than nationally for extended families to cohabit. If the housing is to work for local families, it needs to have a decent share appropriate for those larger families.

Outside the park, there is massive potential and need for further housing development in the surrounding boroughs. It is essential that the mayor, the GLA and local authorities work together to accelerate development on these sites and to ensure that the high standards so far achieved are sustained in subsequent development. The responses of the Government and the mayor contain a number of commitments to exceed environmental and sustainability minimum standards. I trust that they will stick to those commitments.

The development of the park and surrounding area will generate significant new employment opportunities over the coming decades. The perception of the local people whom we met during this inquiry was that, so far, they have not felt the benefits of these opportunities. Our report called on the responsible bodies to develop a co-ordinated programme through which new opportunities can be targeted at local communities. The LLDC has assured us that it is rolling out a programme of outreach and engagement events to ensure that local people are aware. However, this is only half the answer. The new jobs will be taken by locals only if the skills base of people in the area improves. This requires action and investment in the short term to secure the longer-term dividend. We were pleased that the GLA and the LLDC responded

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positively to our recommendation that a construction employment and skills programme be developed, and the corporation is now working on it.

Central to all this is the extent to which the Olympic park itself comes to embody the potential future of the East End—a future of aspiration and hope, and a future of technological jobs that will have a benefit not only locally but for the nation as a whole. The transformation of the former media centre will be central to this, and I know we were impressed by the way in which BT Sport has used the space that it has acquired. I was heartened also to see the news last week that Maker Faire, which the Observer rather unkindly called an “unashamed celebration of geekdom”, will come to the park next year—the first time it has taken place outside the USA—and is expected to draw 75,000 visitors over its four weeks during the summer holidays.

The transport infrastructure left in the wake of the Games will also be critical to that future development. We recommended that the Department for Transport take proper ownership of the unsolved problem of providing Stratford International station with international services. I was disappointed that the Government’s response showed no willingness whatever to engage to a greater degree to push this process along. In preparation for the Games, Transport for London made great strides in improving the accessibility of the London transport network, including for travellers with disabilities. The momentum of these changes must not be lost, and the successful joint working by transport operators must be maintained.

A number of initiatives also piloted during the Games allowed businesses, particularly SMEs, a platform on which to compete to provide services in support of the Games. We concluded that these initiatives were successful and need to be maintained to maximise the benefits to businesses.

In summing up, I come to perhaps the most important observation that ran throughout the various legacy programmes. The real-world pressure of a set deadline to host the Games and the political unacceptability of failing to deliver a world-class event meant that there was a healthy driver to ensure that the plethora of organisations—the veritable table Tower of Babel of competing voices within and outside government—were led strongly to a single common purpose. This leadership and sense of direction are equally important to delivering the legacy but they diminished after the Games passed. We were unconvinced that the Government’s current oversight arrangements represent a robust way in which to deliver the legacy. There is now confusion on the timeframes and targets involved in its delivery and a lack of clear ownership. We recommended that one Minister be given overall responsibility for the many strands of the legacy, working with the devolved Administrations to ensure UK-wide co-ordination. Otherwise, we cannot see much of a meaningful legacy outside London. In the same vein, we called for the mayor’s office to own the vision for the future development of east London and the creation of a lasting Olympic legacy in the capital—and for the mayor’s office to be given the necessary responsibility and power.

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In their response, the Government overtly accepted only one of our 41 recommendations. They did not engage with the recommendation that a single Minister be given specific responsibility, beyond restating the role of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Time will tell, but the committee was convinced by the evidence we received that more coherence is needed if the huge and very real legacy opportunities are not to be missed. I commend this report to the House.

7.17 pm

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for securing this debate on an issue of such importance, not just to this House but to the entire United Kingdom, and for chairing the ad hoc committee in such a commendable way.

On 6 July 2005, just before 1 pm, London time, I stood in Trafalgar Square for what was surely the longest envelope-opening in history—and we heard that word, “London”. What a decision, what a journey, and what a Games. Some 2.4 million fans came to the Paralympics in person, tens of millions watched on Channel 4, and hundreds of millions watched around the world—many watching Paralympic sport for the first time. It was a Games that made household names out of Paralympic athletes for the first time in history. It was a Games in which all the Olympic sponsors were also signed up as Paralympic sponsors, and in which broadcasters around the world showed wall-to-wall coverage.

However, that was then. What of this in 2014? There are massive memories and all that glittering gold, but what stacks up in terms of the legacy promised right from the word go? It makes sense to start with sport. When the noble Lord, Lord Coe, spoke in Singapore he talked about inspiring young people all around the world to choose sport. Since that moment, 350,000 more disabled people are engaged in sport, but that represents tens of percentage points less than their non-disabled counterparts and is a stubborn figure on which to improve.

The funding is in good shape. UK Sport, post-London 2012, has increased funding for Paralympic sport by 45%. Sport England has committed £157 million to improve participation facilities so that disabled people right across the country can get into sport. For the first time, it has put a criterion in the funding programmes for national governing bodies requiring figures to be recorded on disabled participation in their sports. Forty-two out of the 46 national governing bodies have signed up to this. What does the Minister believe Sport England is doing to ensure that that becomes 46 out of 46?

There has also been a tremendous events legacy from the Paralympic Games. In November, the International Tennis Federation will host the wheelchair tennis male singles. Next year, the Para-Swimming world championships will take place in Glasgow, and in 2017—probably the high point of this current cycle—the IAAF World Athletics Championships will also have a Paralympic Athletics World Championships.

On the one-year anniversary of the Games, we saw this events strategy brought into stark relief with, for the first time, the National Paralympic Day being

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hosted on the Olympic park. Some 6,200 people came through the Copper Box to watch not only elite sport but, in the morning, to witness young people from all the growth boroughs have the opportunity to have a go and try out Paralympic sport. That is a real legacy. And it was not just about London: in 36 events right across the country, from Glasgow to Hastings, people had the opportunity to try sport. Leeds City Council reported 1,000 people trying out Paralympic sport in that city alone, and there was a social media campaign touching three-quarters of a million people. This was ground-breaking stuff.

A year on from the Games, back at the park and right after the Anniversary Games, we saw not only superb Olympic performances but Paralympic athletics in a packed-out stadium. For the first time, sponsors were not just getting involved at Games time but continuing their involvement with the British Paralympic Association and with Paralympic sport. Sainsbury’s was very quick out of the blocks with its legacy plans. It announced them in the same week as the closing ceremony for the Paralympic Games. The Sainsbury’s Active Kids For All programme goes to the heart of one of the key problems, enabling those involved in teaching and in leading sport to gain the skills, the experience and, crucially, the comfort and the confidence to become involved and to offer sporting opportunities to disabled people right across the country.

Similarly, BP and BT have announced continued commitment to the British Paralympic Association right through to the Rio cycle. This has never happened before. Historically, Paralympic sport has not even had sponsors in the first place; certainly the sponsors do not stick around post-Games to be involved between the four-year cycles.

Probably one of the greatest things, and the one that gave us so much promise for the legacy, was the broadcast deals that we were able to strike at LOCOG. Channel 4 provided wall-to-wall coverage at Games time, with a continued commitment post-Games, not least in programmes such as “The Last Leg”, which was truly ground-breaking, brave broadcasting. Its marketing campaign at Games time and post-Games was led by Dan Brooke, something of a marketing guru. He runs the marketing campaigns at Channel 4 and he also happens to be the son of my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville.

Then there was Sochi only last week. Previously, had it not been for London, you would not have seen Paralympic winter sport on your TV screens. The coverage of the athletes on snow and ice brought to us by Channel 4 and BBC Radio 5 Live was a real sporting legacy from the broadcasters.

It is probably worth mentioning at this point one of the unsung but most significant parts of the Games, not just in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games but post-Games. A real cornerstone of the legacy is the National Lottery, which provided half the funding for the Paralympic Games. I think we all owe a tremendous debt to Sir John Major for what he did all those years ago. He showed the vision, drive and determination to have a National Lottery which would commit so much funding and so much possibility to sport, culture and the arts in this country. It made a

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difference at Games time and it will make a difference in legacy, not least with the Spirit of 2012 Trust, which has £40 million to push into strategic projects, not least in the area of disability sport.

How do we measure all this? In some ways in terms of the legacy for 2012, one could cite AJP Taylor on the Russian revolution: “It’s too early to say”. Much research was done post-Games. We at LOCOG commissioned research all the way through—we were convinced that we should root everything we did in research. What we saw in the autumn, post-Games, was a real shift in both qualitative and quantitative data. There was attitudinal change as a result of our hosting the Paralympic Games in London. The qualitative data showed that it was not just a question of numbers shifting by large percentages; they showed that attitudes had shifted tremendously. However, all this is incredibly tentative and could easily just slip away if it is not gripped, grasped and driven by all the different organisations responsible for making this stuff happen post-Games for decades to come.

Similarly, we did not just want London 2012 to be the most accessible Olympic and Paralympic Games in history. We were not just providing access for access’s sake; we were doing it to build an inclusive experience at Games time. That is a key element of the legacy. What we were able to achieve at Games time is not what people experience in the premiership, in rugby or in sporting events right across the country. In the coming year, we are going to lead a piece of work for the Equality and Human Rights Commission to really drive into this and to try to assist those organisations to make a significant difference in that area. My interests in the EHRC are as set out in the register.

When we talk about legacy, it is useful to glance over our shoulders and remind ourselves that we have the absolute honour to have started the Paralympic Games in this country. We have that gem and are pushing it into our legacy going forward. Now, wherever the Paralympic Games are held, there will be a flame festival at Stoke Mandeville, where the flame will be lit and taken to wherever the Games are. We saw it recently as the flame started its journey to the Sochi Paralympic Games. This will happen for Rio, Pyeongchang and beyond, putting Stoke Mandeville at the heart not just of history but of the Games going forward. This is reflected across the park with Mandeville Place, with the Agitos—that fabulous Paralympic symbol—and with a medical centre named afterSir Ludwig Guttmann, the genius who came up with the idea of a Paralympic Games in Stoke Mandeville in 1948. That is where it began and it has to have a future, a purpose and a relevance.

In conclusion, I want to highlight two final points which, of themselves, may seem quite small but which I believe had an incredible impact at the time and have the potential, if grasped, to be central to the whole question of legacy. The first is that for the Olympic and Paralympic Games we were able to get true cross-Whitehall working, with 18 government departments coming together and connecting to makes the Games happen. The Games were unique but that cross-Whitehall working does not need to be unique just at Games

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time; it needs to continue in order to drive and deliver the legacy, and it needs to continue across, quite frankly, every appropriate relevant policy area.

Secondly, the work we did with Get Set and the education programme enabled young people with open minds to learn about the Olympic and Paralympic values. Schoolchildren with open minds—the architects, web designers, policymakers and politicians of tomorrow—are learning about inclusion. When they grow up and are in their professional careers, diversity and inclusion will be a given.

There are many ways to look at legacy. There are many measures, including more than several spreadsheets and many metrics. All that has its place but alongside it I urge that we look at the specific, the individual, to see the world in a grain of sand. That was brought home to me last year at an event when a young blind lady spoke to me. She said, “Before the Paralympics, I was ashamed of my white stick. I did not like going out in public. The Paralympic Games made me proud to be a disabled person in Britain”. Our mission is nothing short of that. We have to ensure that we drive legacy and that our Government, corporations, communities and individuals do everything they can to enable that inclusive environment where everyone, regardless of background, disability and any intervening factor, is able to achieve their full potential in a truly united kingdom.

7.31 pm

Baroness Billingham (Lab): My Lords, looking back to that wonderful day when we were told that London would host the Olympic Games of 2012, the future of sport seemed secure. Our bid was inspirational and unique. There was a pledge to produce a new generation, a sporting generation, which seemed not only possible but inevitable. Seeing the support of the nation, the Government promised all the funding needed for the project. The team given the task of planning and building the Games was formidable; success was assured—and so it was. The Games were wonderful. The facilities, the well funded athletes and the millions of volunteers combined to enchant a worldwide audience. As we were promised, it was the “greatest show on earth”.

So how could the original pledge be so badly broken? Who should take the blame? What can be done, and must be done, to remedy the failure? The facts are stark. We have no new sporting generation. Worse than that, we have a generation scarred by obesity. The Government have failed to catch the wind and have made wrong decisions about elite sport over grass-roots sport. They have failed to provide a sound, cohesive strategy to create a strong sporting foundation for the future.

Every sensible person knows that a successful sporting lifestyle has to begin at the earliest opportunity. Expert advice across the piece—from governing bodies, educationalists and medical professionals—was of one mind: namely, that an early start is essential. The Government inherited the school sport partnerships programme, which for the first time brought fully trained physical education teachers into state primary schools. It worked, and the results spoke for themselves. So how could it be that the first post-election action of the Education Minister, Michael Gove, was to scrap

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the system, thus putting grass-roots sport to the back of the queue? Following public and professional outcry, he was forced to replace the scheme—with a pitiful replacement which has little or no chance of success.

The Government’s response to our report is totally negative. Only a radical rethink will repair the damage. Investment in fully qualified PE teachers, helping to create a link between clubs and schools, and helping clubs to improve their facilities with support for better playing facilities—such as flood-lights where appropriate —are actions that the Government must take if we are to see any progress. But none of those has brought any positive response from the Government to our report.

We must have a Minister with overall control of all these issues. Without that, we will continue to see a decline in our promised sporting nation. Given the fine start that the Olympic Games gave us, what a tragedy that hopes are dashed and millions of pounds have been wasted. The Government, being responsible for increasing sporting participation, had plenty of warnings that all was not well. Sport England, the Active People Survey and the Taking Part survey into sport all flagged up concerns. The sporting press became more vociferous and asked: where is the promised legacy? Failure was becoming evident.

Tennis is a good example. For many years, tennis writers and observers were critical of the Lawn Tennis Association and its chief executive, Roger Draper. It was all promises and no product, despite the fact that he was being paid £640,000 a year and had an annual budget to spend of more than £60 million. As the scandalous mismanagement persisted and the facts were put to the Sports Minister, no action was taken. Yet the Government had a duty to intervene. For the first time, government funding, taxpayers’ money, was gifted to the LTA to improve grass-roots performance. But there was absolutely no response from the Government. Why did they not intervene? Why was the LTA not called to account? Even today, after Roger Draper has been forced out of office, the chickens are coming home to roost. We have heard from Sport England, formerly the English Sports Council, that two sports—football and tennis—have showed a serious decline in participants in the past 12 months.

After watching football on TV last weekend, I can see why football is in trouble, but in the year that Andy Murray won Wimbledon—after a 77-year wait—and added the Olympic gold medal to his collection, how could the numbers have fallen in tennis? It was almost more difficult to see a reduction than to see an explosion in the number of new tennis players. Public courts should have been swamped by youngsters taking up the sport. But, sadly, many of those tennis courts have been closed. The point that I am seeking to make is that, if the Government had intervened earlier and taken a stronger stance, thousands of pounds could have been saved and the health of tennis could have been improved. It is an object lesson in incompetence and complacency.

In conclusion, I am sure that the setting up of the Select Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy was entirely right. It allowed the committee to call for evidence from a wide range of sources. It allowed the press and the public to look again at the Government’s competence in fulfilling their Olympic pledge and to

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challenge the outcomes. Questions that we asked were echoed by the press and the public. The written submissions, of which there were hundreds, bear them out. The Government clearly wanted the legacy issue to fade away but our committee has ensured that it will not.

The committee was excellent. It was committed and competent. Our chair, my noble friend Lord Harris, is wise and tolerant, and our expert advisers were outstanding. I found the whole experience valuable. I learnt much which I promise to use in the future to ensure that some of the glaring mistakes made by the Government will be hotly challenged. We can and must do better.

7.39 pm

Lord Addington (LD): My Lords, the whole experience of the committee was one in which I found myself looking with a critical eye at something about which I cared passionately and had always supported. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, provided a very good hand on the tiller, particularly as he admitted that he was not in love with the idea of sports. That provided a nice, sane stabiliser.

We were looking at a huge project that had huge energy and focus. As the noble Lord pointed out, we had a finite time to deliver. This meant that the political class got its act together and got on with it. It said, “We will not tolerate anything going wrong”, and made sure that those they were talking to were told that they were not going to tolerate things going wrong. That proved that if you have focus, you can achieve.

Historical examples of such things happening are there in abundance, but the new thing was legacy. As the noble Lord pointed out, the one legacy that we knew about and had experience of—because we had got it wrong in the past—concerned the facilities themselves, which seem to have turned out to be a success. We have function, in that the stadium will be used and facilities have been reinvented. We are going to get rid of the stuff that we do not need and leave the hard core that is useful. That is a very good idea. Remember Wembley Stadium and Pickett’s Lock? Remember the disasters? Remember the places that did work? Principally, they were for the Manchester Commonwealth Games.

When we came to a sporting legacy, we had an idea—an idea to take what we do, inspire and support the concept of being involved, taking part and creating an elite and going forward with it. To expect us to get things absolutely right first time was probably asking too much. Indeed, I remember on several occasions saying to various people that the people who would experience our legacy model best would probably be those at the next Games. We should remember that this is an international organisation and many of the examples that we used, about how not to have white elephants, waste money or go over budget, were taken from those who went before us, particularly at the Sydney Games and the Athens Games.

Taking on the idea of the legacy in terms of sporting achievement and going forward was always going to be something that we would be taking the first steps on. The most important first step is the fact that we are still discussing it now. I have received briefing from

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the RFU about the Rugby World Cup, which is desperate to ensure that it has a legacy. It is probably easier for a single sport. Indeed, when rugby league had its world cup, it also tried that. In a single sport you have a focus and you can encourage structures to get involved, recruit players, get better pathways, and make sure that you are there to receive them. I will let noble Lords into a little secret. This is merely an extension of what they should have been doing anyway to build their sports. All sports should have been doing that.

On youth involvement, to go back to rugby union again, I had the great privilege of finding myself at lunch the other day with the chap who invented mini rugby. For those who do not know it, that is the junior, short version of the game that was created for rugby union so that when young children play the game they do not find themselves having an exercise in boredom waiting for the ball to come to them. They receive it and are allowed to play. This is something that has been taken on by all sports—you create something small that people can get involved in. It can be shorter-term activity such as short tennis, kwik cricket and shorter terms of football. All of them take this on board.

How do we work this in? How do we build it in? It has to find a home in the education process. There is disappointment about the government response. All political parties have this problem. Sport is great when you are cheering from the sidelines, but would we all not rather be talking about English pass rates or how maths is in decline? I am afraid it is there. There are far too many people involved—although I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is now a convert—who gave up sport at the age of 14, when they could fake their mother’s signature and join the politics society. It happens. If noble Lords have not seen that, I will take them on a guided tour. We have to try to ensure that involvement is consistently there and that we take it on. Unless we make it a central focus of what we are doing, youth involvement and early involvement will fail.

The previous Government took some interesting steps, but the idea remained that something had to be done, and that idea was probably already within the current Government—in both parties. That something had to be done and that there was a row about it was probably a good thing. Maybe the scheme was great, maybe it was not, maybe it had flaws, but the idea going forward is the important thing. That is what we must try to encourage. It may not be perfect, but the idea is there.

Carrying on from that, one area that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, brought forward is the “No Compromise” approach for elite-level sports. We dealt with the problems of Atlanta in 1996. I hope that we have killed that dragon, or at least given it a good thump and driven it off the field of play. We have to look at something that develops our sporting base. We need more in sports aspiring to be at the top. Great as it may be to cheer people winning in rowing and cycling—the Australian joke is that we are great at sports where we sit down—we have to try to expand. We need more people competing in more sports and challenging. We can do it. British amateur boxing is now a dominant force. Maybe that was under this system, but it was on the grounds of

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one person winning a medal at one Games. I am afraid that the “No Compromise” approach is vulnerable to one person having a bad day—two training accidents and somebody having food poisoning at a competition. That makes you vulnerable to losing your base and your future. We must get the idea that we have to go further and bigger. We have won this: do not refer back. Try to go on and get something out there.

Basketball has already been mentioned. It is a sport that has huge potential, especially in areas of urban deprivation. It does not require that much infrastructure —a hard surface and a hoop, and teams of five that are interchangeable. It is non-contact—supposedly. It can involve people. It is a sport that eternally struggles to make it through to the next stage. What we know about mass participation is that it is incredibly helped by having elite-level sport to look up to. Children like heroes.

Unless we can tie everything together with focus and unity, at least within government—and I hope across the political parties—we will all always bump into “Wouldn’t we rather do something different?”. Unless we decide that we must have a way of trying to get those groups and sports outside who are not having instant success, and tolerate some failure, although not eternal tolerance, we will miss opportunities. We have done well and come far, but we must not peter out or flatline: we must think creatively. We may have to offend the rest of the world by saying, “You must change to do this”.

7.48 pm

Lord Best (CB):My Lords, I, too, had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, whose hard work in keeping us all up to speed was an invaluable component in the success of this venture, as was the extremely impressive input of our officer team and the diligence of my committee colleagues.

If I have a criticism of this experiment in the use of the Select Committee approach for a short, sharp, focused exercise, it is a positive one: a report with this much good material in it deserves more widespread publicity and dissemination. A few newspaper articles are not enough to spread the word and while this debate tonight is more than helpful, a more extensive follow-through over a sustained period would make the whole exercise better value for money.

I turn to the content of the Select Committee’s excellent report. My special interest is in the legacy promised by the Games for the regeneration of east London and beyond. Just how successful has this huge investment been and are there lessons, positive or negative, that we should take for regeneration projects both here and elsewhere in the future? A number of our witnesses explained how installing the transport and developing the sites of the Olympics and Paralympics meant compressing decades of much needed investment into a few years. The incredible facilities, the transportation systems and extensive infrastructure, and the housing—the Olympic Park alone will eventually house more than 10,000 new households—have all magically accelerated the regeneration of east London. Certainly there has

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been a speeding up of the hoped-for convergence between the position of the East End boroughs and the rest of London as measured by a number of key indicators.

So is this a story of unmitigated regeneration success? It is important to see what has worked and why, because of the implications for the regeneration of other post-industrial areas of the UK and, indeed, for other large-scale housebuilding projects, including the development of whole new settlements like the “garden city” of Ebbsfleet, announced earlier this week. What this whole exercise has demonstrated is that a particular set of organisational structures, a particular governance framework and a particular modus operandi can be hugely successful. The key components are central government support for a devolved local agency that crosses local authority boundaries with a powerful co-ordinating vision and a clear master plan, with powers—compulsory powers, if necessary—to acquire, assemble and control land use. Like the London Docklands Development Corporation which gave us the phenomenon of Canary Wharf, like the new town development corporations, and like so many international examples of large-scale regeneration from Amsterdam to Singapore, these are the characteristics for successful outcomes. What is then achieved is what was positively planned, in this case including high-quality buildings delivered on time and within budget, not the least of which is well designed, sustainable, affordable and accessible housing.

These are the things we hope for in other places but so seldom achieve. Indeed, the usual approach to development in the UK is almost the exact opposite. By and large we sit and wait for speculative developers to come forward for planning permission with projects that we hope will fulfil all the economic and social objectives an area needs, and we are invariably disappointed. The model of the Olympic Delivery Authority and now the new mayoral London Legacy Development Corporation, show how we can do so much better. These lessons can be transferred not just to the new town of Ebbsfleet, but to major regeneration projects far from the south-east of England, and indeed to the vital task of doubling the nation’s supply of new homes.

I come now to a less positive lesson from the regeneration legacy of 2012. Despite all the brilliant outcomes from the Games, I feel that there is an Achilles heel in this success story. It is that the economic development that produced thousands of new jobs largely bypassed Londoners born and brought up in the East End. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, the Select Committee met with local community groups and heard the sense of grievance that there had been so few opportunities for them. This is confirmed by statistics suggesting that despite there being 104,000 unemployed people in the Olympics boroughs, convergence with the rest of London on the employment criteria has lagged behind, even though more than 10,000 new jobs were created by the Games. Counting as a “local”—someone who has lived nearby for the last 18 months—misses the point. Waves of workers from eastern European countries moved here over the several years of the Olympics development, and they did a great job. I accept the point made by a manager on one of the projects we visited. He agreed that it was

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a pity that no one on the site was truly a local, but asked, “What did you want—the Olympic village built on time and on budget or a construction training scheme for local residents?” He had a point.

In a world of globalised labour markets and with a major problem in this country of poorly targeted skills building, we cannot blame the leadership of the Olympic and Paralympic Games for failing to engage enough home-grown talent. Some useful efforts were made to persuade contractors to take on apprentices and the results were better than for most construction sites, but largely the opportunity was missed. However, the massive regeneration effort kick-started by the Games will run and run. I note in today’s Budget, for example, that extensive housing and development is to be supported in Barking and that some 6,000 new jobs are likely to result. It is not too late to change our ways and use investment in regeneration to skill up many young people—there are still nearly 1 million under 25 year-olds who are not in employment, education or training—so that we can gain not just buildings but jobs for local labour. It is wasteful to pull in the next cohort of eastern European building workers while the unemployed of east London remain unskilled and dejected.

I commend the report released two weeks ago following an inquiry by a cross-party group of parliamentarians jointly chaired by the right honourable Nick Raynsford and myself called No More Lost Generations: Creating Construction Jobs for Young People. The report, which was backed by the Construction Industry Training Board and the Chartered Institute of Building, calls for work in schools and for careers advice about the opportunities in an industry that reckons it will need over 500,000 more workers over the next four years to replace those retiring and to cope with the current expansion of building activity. Yet, as the report notes, only 7,200 apprenticeships were completed in the construction industry last year. I was encouraged by the Government’s and the mayor’s response to our firm recommendations that this issue should henceforth be given real priority in order to take forward the legacy of the Games, and I hope that the LLDC will see this through.

In conclusion, the regeneration legacy of the 2012 Games is truly wonderful and demonstrates what a proactive, empowered and devolved development structure can deliver. But as we continue to regenerate east London, and indeed take the legacy lessons elsewhere, I hope that we can use the resulting investment to achieve a double benefit, not just the infrastructure and new homes we need, but the apprenticeships, the training and the jobs that the construction industry can so importantly provide for our own next generation of workers.

7.57 pm

Lord Moynihan (Con): My Lords, 10 years ago in your Lordships’ House, the day after London was shortlisted by the International Olympic Committee as one of the bidding cities for the 2012 Olympic Games, I tabled a Motion for debate to call attention to the progress of the London 2012 Olympic bid. Our prospects were not good. The IOC may have shortlisted us, but we lay eighth out of nine cities, behind Madrid and Paris and even Leipzig, Moscow and Havana. The

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demonstration of all-party support that day was as important to the success of the bid as I believe it is important to the success of the sporting legacy. This House has continued to play a significant role and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harris, the Select Committee and the clerks on their work. The report holds out real hope that an urban regeneration programme can deliver an outstanding and lasting legacy for east London. If it does, it will be due in no small part to the foresight and skills of the Olympic Delivery Authority chairman, Sir John Armitt, the chief executive, David Higgins, and the senior management team, including outstanding contributions from Dennis Hone and Alison Nimmo.

Olympic glory represents the pinnacle of sporting achievement. Its attainment requires a partnership between the highly talented athletes who compete and a national sporting infrastructure that allows them to rise to the top because of it rather than in spite of it. As chairman of the British Olympic Association which was tasked with selecting, leading and managing Team GB for the Games in Beijing and London, it is my firm belief that Olympic success requires a dynamic, vibrant, positive and inclusive approach that reaches up from the grass roots of primary schools and after-school clubs to the very pinnacle of elite performance.

As the report concluded, the true sports legacy of London 2012 will come through the protection of playing fields and facilities, quality PE teachers, first-rate coaches, enthused volunteers and the transformation of sport in our schools. London 2012 was the opportunity to provide the inspiration to generate a step change in the provision of school sport. However, as we discovered during the work of the Select Committee, very sadly, it has barely touched the sides and has left a generation uncertain and at the centre of an increasingly sterile debate over the success or otherwise of school sports partnerships. If every school had a trained PE teacher, a programme of building relationships with professional and voluntary clubs, a strong competition framework, and a supportive head backed by parents and local clubs, there is no reason why school sport should not succeed in this country, as it does in all leading sports nations.

We need to meet the goal set out by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, following his attendance at the closing ceremony in Beijing, to extend the time pupils participate in sport from two to five hours a week, if necessary by a longer school day, and set a date by which we intend to deliver this objective. Such a policy would pay for itself many times over in educational and health benefits for young people, particularly by addressing the challenge of obesity and inactivity. Physical education should be an entitlement for all children and young people, and the keystone of a sustainable sports legacy. Our attitude to sport and its role in our lives is formed in childhood and in school sport. We need to deliver physical literacy and to recognise the social policy benefits of sport in our communities. Sport is the great social worker.

According to afPE, at least 40% of all newly qualified primary school teachers receive six hours or less preparation to teach physical education out of the totality of their training. That requires a response which goes

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far beyond the nominal pilot projects which have been commissioned by government and were mentioned to us in evidence. A nationwide approach to finding a solution is essential, and the Department of Health should be central to this campaign, not on the fringes.

Although we heard that many of the activities organised around the School Games have been fun, the four pathway levels are not functioning as effectively as we would like. It is a little-appreciated fact that no school competes at national level; young people represent the region in which they live. Thus it is impossible to capitalise on the loyalty between pupils and their schools which inspires success. These are not the School Games—they are the School-Age Games. With the level of funding involved, the governing bodies of sport, which in many cases have run inter-school competitions at local, regional and national level for more than a century, could transform the landscape for far more children, in far more sports, to a much higher level of attainment than has been achieved.

The Government have argued that there has been an increase in participation. In winding up, I would be grateful if my noble friend could confirm once and for all the position regarding participation levels in sport. My noble friend Lord Coe, in his evidence, talked of 1.5 million more people playing sport—but since 2005, he added. That 1.5 million comes against a background of a 4 million increase in population, the majority of whom are economically active or students. As such, the figure represents a decrease in participation among the overall population, and yet an increase was fundamental to the sports legacy that was set at the time we bid for the Games.

According to the breakdown by sport, there are six major professional sports in the UK, and the London Olympic Games regrettably had negligible impact on their activities. In order of economic impact they were: football, horseracing, tennis, cricket, rugby union and rugby league. In terms of participation, tennis moves above horseracing, but the list remains otherwise unchanged. Golf is the only other professional sport that has mass participation in the UK, and there is no evidence that this was impacted by London 2012.

Let us focus on the 26 summer Olympic sports and what they gained in the London 2012 process, bearing in mind that professional sports occupy more than 95% of the media coverage during an Olympic quadrennium. Of the sports I have mentioned, only football and tennis were Olympic sports in London, and participation in tennis, as the noble Baroness mentioned, has actually dropped since the Games, despite Team GB winning a gold and silver medal in the event. The two sports showing an upturn are swimming and cycling. Cycling has done so for a complex set of reasons, both Olympic and non-Olympic, including Team Sky and the remarkable success in the Tour de France, while swimming has recently been penalised heavily at the elite level by UK Sport.

As Hugh Robertson, Minister for the Olympics and one of the best Sports Ministers this county has seen, stated:

“We have held an Olympics which surpassed expectations; it has produced an amazing stimulus, and a new generation of

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sporting heroes. However anybody who remotely pretends it will be easy to increase general participation in sport is kidding themselves”.

It may not be easy. It will require a comprehensive overhaul of sports policy and a move to empower the governing bodies of sports, but it is essential that we reverse the current trend and not lose the requirement for an Olympic sports legacy by kicking it into the long grass and placing it in an arbitrary 20-year plan.

The National Lottery, introduced by Sir John Major in 1995, revolutionised funding, as my noble friend mentioned. At the top of the pyramid, the Select Committee reviewed the so-called “No Compromise” philosophy of the Government-appointed UK Sport—which is, incidentally, still without athlete representation on its board. Even UK Sport has never dared to echo the Government’s response to our report:

“UK Sport’s ‘No Compromise’ philosophy has taken the GB Olympic team from 36th in the medal table in Atlanta 1996 to 3rd in London in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

It is not the “No Compromise” approach that wins medals, but outstandingly talented able-bodied and disabled athletes, superb coaches from around the world, world-beating support systems and world-leading performance directors—all supported and led by the governing bodies and not run by UK Sport. The money from lottery players, channelled through UK Sport, is of course absolutely invaluable as a platform, but money does not guarantee a suite of medals. If it did, the results in swimming would have been very different. We have to empower the governing bodies to deliver the performance pathways at all levels: child, junior, senior and Olympic. It is performance pathways, not funding based on previously won medals—after which, incidentally, many of the athletes then retire—which should drive funding.

So far, the pursuit of the “No Compromise” approach has seen the demise of any chance of a sports legacy for synchronised swimming, handball, water polo, weightlifting and the full basketball programme—all of which have had their funding completely withdrawn by UK Sport. Volleyball is also down, by 90%. Are your Lordships and David Walsh the only independent campaigning voices for Olympic sport left? It is surely wrong as well for UK Sport to take the position that, as it stated in its evidence:

“We have no plans to review this approach as we have no wish to give other nations a competitive advantage over Team GB”.

John Coates, vice-president of the IOC and mastermind of Australia’s Olympic success over the years, demonstrated in his evidence that he fully understands every aspect of the “No Compromise” approach.

Furthermore, it is very unwise for anyone in government, of whichever political party, UK Sport and the ultra-secret work of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy to talk of exceeding the 29 gold medals won in London when we go to Rio —even when you include the new sports of rugby sevens and golf—before you know who you have selected and who you are competing against and, on top of that, not to take into account the home advantage we had, with Team GB supported by a nation of patriotic sports fans galvanised across the United Kingdom. Aspirations are fine, but medal projections are for the bookies, not for serious politicians and sports

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administrators. Sir Clive Woodward’s evidence about the cuts to Olympic sports and the impact on the future performance of Team GB was impressive in this context.

At stake in this report is the provision of a genuine, far-reaching and enriching sports legacy for this country: one which fundamentally transforms the expectations, aspirations and very lifestyles of future generations of children and adults alike. This was an outstanding report, the best on the subject from inside or outside Parliament. It allows us to have a defining moment in time, when we can revolutionise our sporting life—if we have the collective vision, courage and determination to do so.

Sadly, after a brilliant Games and with such potential for the regeneration of the urban legacy, precious little progress has been made on the sports front over the past two years. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, this is deeply disappointing. We need determined leadership, strong independent voices, and members of the Cabinet sub-committee out on the road, not closeted in secrecy. We need commitment and attention to detail, not the generalities of long-term aspirations for the next 10 or 20 years of sport. We need action now, not in the distant future. We owe it to the British Olympians who made the Games great. Above all, we owe it to the athletes of tomorrow and the young people of today.

8.10 pm

Baroness King of Bow (Lab): I begin by declaring an interest as Channel 4’s diversity executive and I am incredibly proud of Channel 4’s legacy as the Paralympic Games broadcaster. I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, about Channel 4’s achievement in changing attitudes towards disability, not least the “Meet the Superhumans” trailer, masterminded by Dan Brooke. It was nothing less than a game-changer. So, too, was the entire legacy promise of London 2012. No previous Olympic Games had ever put legacy at the very heart of the bid. Our legacy promised,

“nothing less than a healthier and more successful sporting nation, open for business, with more active, sustainable, fair and inclusive communities”.

The key question was posed by one of our veteran 2012 medallists, the rower Greg Searle. He said: how do we turn all the national pride generated in all corners of the country into producing not just the next generation of Olympic gold medallists but the next generation of good citizens? How do we inspire a generation, make Britain a more active sporting nation and, through the Paralympics, give every disabled child the same chance of engaging in sport as their able-bodied counterparts? Our report considers those huge questions, and how we can fulfil the legacy before it is too late.

I will start with the most obvious and urgent legacy: a healthier, more active nation. Why is it so important? The answer is simple: it is a matter of life and death. Is this an exaggeration? It is not, especially if you live in Tower Hamlets. I will come to that shortly. The obvious starting point is the well documented obesity epidemic facing Britain. Data from the Health Survey for England show that by 2050 fully one-quarter of young people under 20 will be obese. Today only one-third of boys

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and one-quarter of girls achieve the recommended 60 minutes’ physical exercise a day. That means that two-thirds of boys and three-quarters of all our girls are setting themselves up for health problems in later life, including but not at all limited to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. In other words, they are setting themselves up for premature death.

I am sorry to say that in Tower Hamlets we have already reached the future predicted for England in 2050. Today, on average, women in Tower Hamlets already die 18 years earlier than their counterparts in Richmond. Men in Tower Hamlets can worry a bit less: they die only 15 years earlier than their counterparts in Richmond. You lose approximately a year of life for every stop on the District line as you move from Richmond to Tower Hamlets. In Tower Hamlets, more than one-quarter of all children leaving primary school are clinically obese. If you add together the children leaving primary school in Tower Hamlets who are both overweight and obese, the figure is over 40%.

There are two things that will stop those children dying younger. It is not rocket science—we know what they are. One is increased activity and the other is better nutrition. I will leave better nutrition for another day, although I confess to being slightly obsessed with it, because too often I spend the morning at the school gates in Tower Hamlets watching children eat crisps for breakfast and drink fizzy cola. I will concentrate instead on increased activity and grass-roots participation in sports. That is why the committee’s recommendation to improve PE teaching is so important. In our report we state that,

“PE needs a greater emphasis in the school day … Improving PE is fundamental … and we call on the DfE and Ofsted to take more active roles in making this change happen”.

I endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said on this issue. If we need to lengthen the school day, let us lengthen the school day. Surely it is better than shortening children’s lives. I also endorse the excellent report by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, calling on the Government to give PE greater priority in the school curriculum.

It is absolutely critical to improve the link between primary school and secondary school sport. My noble friend Lady Billingham has already spoken about the sad demise of the school sport partnerships. The problem with the current system is that money goes to individual schools but does not support the sporting infrastructure between schools that promotes competitive sport.

A related problem that we have already heard about in some detail is the negative impact on team sports of the “No Compromise” approach. The focus on medals above all else has damaged funding opportunities for team sports. Team sports are the ones that kids are most likely to play—football, netball, volleyball, basketball, rugby and hockey —the sports we all remember playing as kids. They are the sports where you get the most bang for your buck in terms of grass-roots participation. They are the sports kids want to play. These sports will arguably do most to keep the London 2012 flame alive. How perverse would it be for our elite medal quest to reduce the sporting participation of British kids and shrink our sporting talent pool?

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I understand that our approach has had huge success and I would be the first to say that I was filled with enormous pride at our medal haul. To come third in the world behind only China and America is extraordinary. The mountain we climbed was perilously steep, as we have heard, from being ranked 36th in the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 to coming third overall in London 2012. But the one thing that would be even more extraordinary and make me even more proud of this country would be a 2012 legacy that inspired a fitter, healthier country. It would be seeing Britain climb the league table to become the healthiest and most active country in the industrialised world. It would be to see our children living longer and having more active and meaningful lives.

That is the thing about sport: it creates this magic thing that politicians and policy wonks call social cohesion. We all remember the Oldham riots, where Asians and whites fought running battles in the streets. What was the one thing, the only thing, that the council could find that represented a bridge between the two communities? It was football, and that is because sport is a universal language.

London 2012 also made sport more inclusive, particularly for disabled athletes, as we have heard, but also for women. Women in the Olympics have come a long way. The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, is similar to many great men in history. His achievements were, well, great—and his belittlement of women was even greater. At the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, which de Coubertin arranged, 245 men took part, representing 14 countries, competing in 43 events. No women took part because de Coubertin said their presence would be,

“impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect”.

You wonder what he would have said about the Paralympics; it does not really bear thinking about.

In 1912, women were allowed to compete in swimming for the first time, but none of those competing was from the USA, because the USA banned its women from entering events without long skirts. I am not talking about Saudi Arabia; I am talking about the USA. That illustrates how far we have come. We have come so far, in fact, that, today, the words “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect” would probably be a fair way of describing our men’s football team in London 2012, but not our women. I salute all the British women who performed so magnificently and I look forward to the Minister securing equality of funding for women’s sports.

On the subject of fairer funding, we should also look at who gets to represent Britain in the first place. Elite sport is dominated by those who are privately educated—that should not be such a surprise, because everything is dominated by those who are fortunate enough to have a private education—but it is still staggering, even though we know that that is real world, to find, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, first pointed out to me, that more than 50% of the medals won in 2012 went to British athletes who were privately educated. Why should we get so exercised about that? Well, it is about the talent pool, stupid, because that means that more than 50% of our sporting talent is drawn from less than 7% of our population—the 7% of British children who go to private schools.

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I have raised some of the problems affecting children growing up in very disadvantaged areas. These problems, which lead to nothing less than premature death, require structural change. One small yet decisive structural change in government that would support London’s 2012 legacy is our committee’s proposal to have a Minister for the Games Legacy. I have one simple question for the Minister: what harm could it do? It could no harm, yet it could secure immeasurable good. It would make current plans more coherent; it would give added impetus at a government level. It would cost nothing—zilch, zip, nada—not even a newly minted 12-sided pound coin, not even a threepenny bit. If it is so cheap at the price, why are the Government so resistant to considering it? It would be fantastic to get a considered reply and not just a restatement of government policy, although experience tells me that that is probably the most the Minister will be able to achieve—but I live in hope.

As our report states, and as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who so ably chaired the committee, stated, we hunted for white elephants but we did not find them. What we found, despite the resounding success of London 2012, were myriad missed opportunities. Some were modest, some were galactic—such as the missed opportunity immediately to harness the enthusiasm of the volunteers—but the biggest missed opportunity would be a failure to nurture increased sporting participation. Given the link between sport and social cohesion, between sport and good citizenship, and between sport and living longer, it would be an unforgivable failure of the promise of 2012 if that legacy was not realised. I therefore urge the Minister to heed the report, which states:

“We are unconvinced that the Government’s current oversight arrangements represent a robust way to deliver the legacy”.

For that reason, I ask the Minister to give a more positive response to the committee’s well researched and evidenced recommendations than we have thus far received from them.

8.23 pm

Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD): It was one of the most pleasurable and immensely interesting experiences of my three years in the Lords to take part in this Select Committee, ably and expertly led by our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and very well served by our excellent committee staff and our advisers. Above all, we all got on incredibly well. I wondered why that was and I think that, fundamentally, it was because we were discussing and examining something that was successful and we all had great determination that we were not going to lose the legacy of that success.

I think that there are four principal elements of this legacy. There is the ongoing sporting success which we want to lead to increased participation in our sport and to better lifestyles and health—we are, after all, a nation of great lovers of sport and it is always more enjoyable when we are good at it. The second legacy that we were interested in is the boost to business, which was so successfully involved in the running of the Olympics—the construction, the involvement of our creative sector, the event organisers, the logistics experts and sporting businesses. Thirdly, there was the huge success of delivery by government agencies, assisted

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by private sector expertise. We must learn the lessons from that and the best practice that was employed through that success. Finally, the most important thing going forward is the whole regeneration of the East End of London, which was at the heart of our original Olympic bid.

We have discussed a number of issues tonight, but I want to draw on a number of examples of people whom we met and people whom we visited to draw out lessons for the legacy. I want to start with the issue of elite sport. The medal tally was outstanding. There was, however, a huge advantage to the home team. We must have lower expectations in Brazil, because I fear that there will be a spiralling down of performance, as happened with Australia, which simply continued after Sydney through Beijing to London. That is a warning to us.

There were two evidence sessions which left a mark on me. The one has already been mentioned, with Sir Clive Woodward. Sir Clive Woodward was exceptional as a witness and he clearly played a key role in our athletes’ success. We know what happened to English rugby when he left that scene. We know also that he told us that there was a huge organisational effort behind the scenes to achieve success in the Olympics, where the margins between success and failure at this level are so narrow. He said that it would be very difficult to replicate that away from home, and the team has largely disassembled since. He gave us a warning also about the lack of encouragement to key underperforming team sports and said what we should do about it. It is most difficult to win in those sports, which is one reason why they are not targeted, but we know that they have large public participation benefits. We have to understand, obviously, the rigour in competition for encouraging success at elite sports. It puts pressure on improved performance.

However, we have also to admit that UK Sport has ignored our advice—it has done that this week. If it does not want to consider compromising on the basis of elite funding, somebody—I suppose that that is going to be Sport England or other organisations—has to provide parallel, complementary funding for community sports to encourage sports where there is high participation potential, even if elite success finds it very difficult to qualify for elite sport funding.

The second meeting which impressed me was that with Ian Drake, the chief executive of British Cycling—modest, professional, supremely successful in what he has achieved—setting out his original objectives. Twelve years ago, he told us, they had to advertise for athletes to be Olympic cyclists. The strategy that they adopted matched their elite performance success in Beijing and London, with target rates of public participation improvement. Now they choose from 50,000 competitive cyclists for their success at the senior level.

The approaches outlined by Clive Woodward and Ian Drake contrasted, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, with the complacent approach of more wealthy major sports such as football and tennis. I hope that Greg Dyke will shake up football in England at national and community level and answer the questions: does Germany’s success depend much more on its community football structure,

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with twice as many volunteer qualified coaches than we have; and are training facilities and processes for players and coaches simply not rigorous enough?

As my noble friends Lord Holmes and Lord Moynihan said, elite sport success has been built on John Major’s initiative with the Lottery. Over £300 million goes into the current Olympic cycle for elite sport funding. However, others in the world will copy what we do and have achieved. They will poach our know-how and skills so that it will become much more difficult for us. We cannot stand still or be complacent. We must seek out enhanced, competitive advantage and, ultimately, focus on increased participation and better training pathways than other countries can produce.

As for regeneration, two visits struck me and stay in my mind as showing the challenge for regeneration. We have already heard of the meeting we had with the community residents in Newham. It was depressing. They saw little benefit from the Olympics. Their perceptions were of traffic congestion, construction work, Games disturbance and no jobs while their council houses remained unpainted. Then there was the uplifting meeting we had at Gainsborough School in Hackney Wick. Some 40% of children there were from immigrant population origins and 10% came to the school not speaking English. Yet it was vibrant—a well led school in a Victorian building, with only a tarmac courtyard for play facilities. We met keen, aspirational children who had been in the opening ceremony at the Olympics. They were enthusiastic about the Olympics and their own aspirations were encouraging. The school facilities were about to be transformed by two pitches on the Olympic park by the press and broadcast centre, with their own bridge across the canal from the school to those playing pitches built by the legacy corporation.

The challenge for us in regeneration, though, is whether we can retain the optimism and aspirations of these children as they move through our educational system. Regeneration will work well only if all parts of the community benefit and housing is provided that is affordable. I picked up one word of warning as we went round the park: the first £1 million flat was for sale. Is that a warning of what will come? As we regenerate and build, the skills of the local people—as the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out—must be harmonised and harnessed in that process. That started a bit, as we heard, in the Westfield shopping centre, but this is an area of low aspiration that must be transformed with better educational and technical training facilities. In the response from the Government and mayor, it is encouraging that they are moving ahead with the opening of two university technical colleges, one dealing with modern methods of construction of business units and the other with design and engineering. That is a start.

As for the stadium, we had two fascinating meetings with the CEO of West Ham and the chair of Leyton Orient. We thought the dispute between West Ham and Leyton Orient was unseemly. Having seen them, we were cautious in proposing that they should work closely together—that was probably wise. But the national stadium is iconic. It is bigger than those two clubs. There was a huge cost in changing the plans for that

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stadium. What matters now is that those two clubs do for their communities what really needs to be done and make a success of those facilities and their presence there. They have a key role in raising expectations and achievement in those communities. That role could be immense. It is also very important that the stadium sets a standard—as I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will tell us in her remarks—for the quality and quantity of seating for the disabled. I was encouraged by the Government’s response to the report on that issue.

So much success in sport, business and indeed politics depends on strong confidence. The key to the Olympic legacy is not to lose the feeling of confidence that we really can achieve something in our sport, business ventures, regenerating east London and inspiring those young children we met in east London to aspire and take advantage of the Olympic legacy so that it becomes self-fulfilling.

8.34 pm

Lord Wigley (PC): My Lords, I, too, place on record my appreciation for the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, chaired the committee and the excellent support we were given by the committee clerk and his team, and the two special advisers.

As has been noted, the committee put in a very considerable volume of work at short notice to get our report completed by our deadline. Against that background, the Government’s response is disappointing. On many issues raised by the committee in its unanimous report there was little response more than restating government policy without regard to the report’s rationale. There is little point in incurring a commitment of time and money in undertaking such an investigation if the Government treat it less than rigorously. But, to be even-handed, I note my disappointment that there appears to be no direct comment from the Governments of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, either, although many of the recommendations have a direct bearing on the responsibilities of those devolved Administrations. Of course, they have no obligation to respond. However, the Welsh Government recently took their own initiative. I will return to that in a moment.

I make one general point before addressing six or seven of the 41 government responses. The Olympic Games are awarded to a specific city and not to a country. The ethos of the Games requires that the competitors, and hence the competitions themselves, function within a reasonable proximity of the location at which the Games are held. These aspects are not always fully understood. As the general UK taxpayer had to fund the considerable cost of the Games, there was a feeling sometimes that they should benefit more from a greater spread of the activities. For example, there was no need to build artificial mountain cycling locations in Essex. There are perfectly good natural ones in Wales. Sports such as sailing which, inevitably, had to move away from London could have been held in locations such as Pwllheli, where many European competitions are held.

I accepted that London and south-east England would benefit far more from hosting the Games for those reasons, but perhaps the Government should

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have been more honest from the start by making that clear to everyone. I also repeat what I have gladly put on record many times: that the Olympic Games and, in particular, the Paralympic Games, were a tremendous success and that everyone involved—competitors, organisers, security services and volunteers and, indeed, both Governments—deserve congratulations.

Perhaps I may make a few brief comments on half a dozen issues arising directly from the Government’s response. First, there are the recommendations relating to sport in schools, to which several noble Lords have already alluded, particularly primary schools. I am looking at recommendations 4, 5 and 6. There does not seem to be any new government thinking on those matters; rather, there is the approach that “We are already doing what we deem appropriate”.

I urge the Government to follow carefully the initiatives taken in Wales arising from the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and her review committee. In fact, just yesterday, the Welsh Education Minister Huw Lewis announced a new £1.8 million physical literacy programme for schools. That is part of the response to the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on schools and physical activity. It is to do four things: increase physical activity in schools; develop a physical literacy framework; involve prominent athletes in community sport; and build on Wales’s annual school sport survey.

The Welsh Government, in taking that strategic initiative, have asserted that physical literacy should be as important as reading and writing, which goes towards the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that PE should be a core subject, something which will now be considered by Professor Graham Donaldson in his curriculum review, due shortly. No doubt the noble Baroness will expand on some of those points in her contribution.

However, I welcome the Government’s response 13, dealing with the access to and facilities for disabled people at sports grounds, particularly football grounds. I am glad that the Government are prepared to consider further legislation on licence conditions, and I hope that we will be hearing more about that. Can the Minister —our poacher turned gamekeeper, if I may put it that way—indicate the timescale envisaged to progress that legislative aspect?

I am somewhat disappointed by government response 15. It relates to the identification of the net benefit figures and the committee’s call for them to be published. The response has been woeful. The Government appear to be totally complacent about measuring the economic effects in terms of gross benefit and stubbornly refused to identify the net benefit. I can only conclude that they may have something to hide and that the net economic benefit is a much smaller proportion than the gross figures.

As we are repeatedly told that so many aspects of the project spending would have taken place in due course irrespective of the Games, I can only conclude that such infrastructure spending is being treated coyly to avoid the possibility of generating Barnett consequentials for the devolved Administrations.

On response 32, the committee called for SMEs to be helped in the public sector procurement process by having the “compete for” system permanently available.

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The Government’s response did not address our worries about the danger to SMEs of the proliferation of procurement tools. Can we be assured that the Government have taken that fully on board and are sensitive to the needs of SMEs, and that opportunities for SMEs will be equally available throughout the UK?

The committee noted in item 33 that south-east England benefited disproportionately from the Games and called on UKTI to assess the reasons for the disparity. The Government defend their record by quoting the number of projects going to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—14%, by number—but they do not give the figures with a breakdown by value and do not address the failure to give northern England a fair deal. That response is rather complacent.

I can, however, welcome the response to point 34 about the need to ensure that tourists coming to the UK get beyond south-east England. I notice that the DCMS has asked VisitBritain to address that issue and I hope that the House will be kept informed of progress.

I turn to response 37, dealing with the committee’s questioning of the existence of any long-term distinct legacy benefit of the Cultural Olympiad. The Government passed the buck in its entirety to the Arts Council of England, and every item that it mentions which has a geographic base is in fact in England. That is perhaps understandable for the Arts Council of England, but the Government are a UK Government, and taxpayers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland contributed to funding the Olympic Games. Surely the Government should have been aware of the need to address legacy issues in terms of the arts and culture in the three other nations, not just in England. Perhaps they have done so and have just forgotten to mention it in their response. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that.

Finally, I address item 39, which concerns the omission, tacitly acknowledged in the Government’s response, on ensuring that the legacy is delivered outside London and that a designated Minister should work with the devolved Administrations. The Government’s response is that it is a matter for the devolved Administrations to make the most of the Games’ legacy in devolved functions, so there will be no additional resources or co-ordination on those matters. I believe that that is letting down a particular aspect of the legacy. I pick out those points and ask for the Minister’s response on them, but there are many other points in the body of the report which I hope will not be forgotten.

8.44 pm

Baroness Wheatcroft (Con): My Lords, there are many speakers here this evening better equipped than I to talk about the sporting legacy of the Olympics. I was a member of the committee and it was a very enjoyable experience, as others have said, helped by a very able chairman and a back-up team who were excellent. I think it better if I restrict myself to some aspects of the broader legacy, particularly in employment, skills and trade.

The Olympics demonstrated that Britain is indeed Great and gave credence globally to the campaign being run by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to market this country and what we can do.

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However, parts of Britain are not in some ways as great as others. Unemployment in the host boroughs was, as we have heard, prior to the Olympics some of the highest in the region. The massive project of the Games and the regeneration programme has improved the situation a little, but not enough. There is a continuing challenge to ensure that the boroughs get the new jobs that they need.

The Stratford City development as a whole is due to create 30,000 new jobs. Westfield at Stratford has already created 10,000 jobs and of those, a third went to local people who were previously long-term unemployed. There are those who carp that the Westfield shopping centre was going to go ahead, come what may, but it certainly happened sooner than it would have done without the Olympics and, for those who are working there, time of course is money. Meanwhile, of the people now employed at the Copper Box—the first venue on the Olympic park to reopen to the public and a wonderful facility for local people and schools—more than 90 per cent are local. Admittedly, this is a small number but the principle is encouraging. Equally encouraging is that the Copper Box is being run by a social enterprise and that several other businesses now operating within the Olympic park are social enterprises, giving people who work there not just a job but a sense of ownership.

At iCITY, which was the communications hub during the Olympics and Paralympics, tenants are being asked to have a quota of jobs for local people. This is a particularly exciting prospect because iCITY is to be home to some of the digital and communications businesses that are the future of this country—the real engines of growth. As your Lordships have heard, we were lucky enough to go along and visit the BT Sport centre. We saw the state-of-the-art studios that it has built in what was the communications centre during the Olympics. The studios are fantastic and were opened in record time, and they are taking on local people as well. New jobs are being created down there and yet the evidence we heard indicated that there was a degree of doubt, verging on cynicism, about whether the upsurge in job opportunities that is part of the Olympic legacy would benefit the local people.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out some of the reasons that that might be. One can sympathise with the belief that in getting the stadia ready and finished on time for the Olympics, getting there on time was more of a priority than training locals in the skills needed to create the buildings. However, there are now signs that that is changing. The legacy corporation is already working with local jobs brokerages but we recommended that people needed to be skilled up and that there should be a concerted effort by the Mayor, the host boroughs and employers to invest in developing a construction skills programme. There seems to have been great progress on this front and, as my noble friend Lord Stoneham pointed out, it is great news that not one but two university technical colleges are being built in east London to provide vocational training to lead 14 to 19 year-olds into careers in the construction and engineering fields.

We heard wonderfully cheering news today on the jobs front generally, with the Budget speech revealing that youth unemployment has been falling faster than

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at any time since 1997. That may, in part, be part of the Olympic legacy but we also heard about the Government’s determination to help businesses flourish and drive exports. There are some businesses which had hoped that their involvement in the Olympics would provide them with a major advantage in winning future contracts, but which have been disappointed. The Olympics provided a fantastic showcase for what Britain could deliver and UK Trade & Investment has done—and continues to do—a great deal to help many of those companies, big and small, that were involved in the 2012 Games. This was the first time that the International Olympic Committee had been persuaded to allow a supplier recognition scheme, which has allowed more than 770 companies to gain official recognition for their contribution to the Games and use it to promote themselves.

It is no fault of the Government that there are many other businesses which are precluded from taking this route. Many of them are in the creative industries, where the UK excels. According to PLASA, the trade association for the professional entertainment technology industry, some of the companies that were responsible for developing the most memorable moments in the opening and closing ceremonies, including the iconic Olympic rings, cannot boast about the fact that they were there and they did it. The reason is that the supplier recognition scheme is limited by the draconian Olympic no marketing rights protocol. The protocol is intended to protect the giants who are the major sponsors of the Olympics, so companies are excluded from the supplier recognition scheme if they are involved in—it is a broad-brush approach—audio, video and audio-visual equipment.

Our committee recommended that the Government should work with the British Olympic Association and suppliers to narrow the list of exclusions. The Government’s response to our recommendation was somewhat disappointing, albeit perhaps realistic. They said:

“There is no scope for changing these categories”.

While I acknowledge that the IOC is not always prepared to compromise—perhaps that is putting it mildly—it is surely worth encouraging the British Olympic Association to press further on this point. To put massive handicaps on David in order to protect Goliath seems to lack a bit of the Olympic spirit.

Let me give you just one example of how these broad-brush restrictions work in practice. Baldwin Boxall is an innovative business which provided the London Olympic stadium with a special voice communication system that would help disabled people in the event of an emergency, particularly a fire. It is for use in emergencies only. The system does not broadcast. Yet the company has been unable to use its involvement to market what it did in 2012 to help it pitch for Sochi or Rio. The reason is that Panasonic and Samsung are among the sponsors who need to be protected. Baldwin Boxall is an innovative business, but it employs just 45 people and has a turnover of around £5 million. Does Panasonic, with around 300,000 employees and revenue last year of $76 billion have anything to fear from Baldwin Boxall? Should Samsung,

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with 427,000 employees and revenue last year of not £5 million but $269 billion be frightened by the little company from the Wealden Industrial Estate in Crowborough?

Companies such as this helped the UK deliver a superb Games. They ought to be able to reap the rewards and, in so doing, they ought to be helping to boost British exports. The British Olympic Association surely needs to do better in battling for the little guys against the protectionism of the IOC.

8.54 pm

Lord Mawson (CB): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the Select Committee for their helpful report and for keeping us all focused on the longer term issues that surround the Olympic project. The long-term legacy in east London has been the focus for my work over the past 16 years of involvement with this project. The Olympic project is far from finished; it is a work in progress. If done well, in partnership with the business and social enterprise sectors in east London it will continue to act as a catalyst regenerating an area that stretches across the lower Lea Valley from the O2 in the south, north up through Canning Town, Canary Wharf, Poplar and Stratford to Hackney Marshes.

I thought it might be most helpful this evening, as a director of the London Legacy Development Corporation —here I declare an interest—if I focus my remarks on the legacy and regeneration work being undertaken in east London. I will leave other matters mentioned in the report to those more expert than I in these areas.

The London Legacy Development Corporation is driving the legacy of the London 2012 Games to positively change the lives of east Londoners. By transforming the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park into a vibrant destination, we will develop a dynamic new heart for east London. Opportunities for local people will be created alongside innovation and growth for the rest of the UK. Our 10-year plan is to lead regeneration and create opportunity in and around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park through a number of routes.

First, we will create a successful and accessible park with world-class venues, leisure space for local people, arenas for thrilling sport, enticing entertainment and an ongoing programme of sporting, cultural and community events to attract visitors. Secondly, we will create opportunities and transformational change for local people, wider access to education and jobs, connecting communities and promoting convergence, bridging this gap between east London and the rest of the capital. Thirdly, we are creating a new heart for east London. We are doing this by securing investment from across London and beyond, by attracting and nurturing talent to create, design and make world-class, 21st century goods and services. The park will be a place where local residents and new arrivals choose to live, work and enjoy themselves, and where businesses choose to locate and invest. The legacy corporation is now working with partners to engage local people and help them to access jobs and business opportunities, and to use the facilities offered. We will make sure that the legacy is one that can be enjoyed by everyone, post-Games.

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Since the end of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics Games, huge progress has been made. We have removed temporary venues, improved transport connections across the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and created beautiful parkland areas. The full opening of the park is on 5 April 2014—only weeks away. More than 1 million people have already visited the park since it partially opened in summer 2013. The future of all eight permanent London 2012 venues is now secure. This collectively means that London is further ahead than any other host city in history. Five new neighbourhoods are being created; each has its own distinctive character. Up to 10,000 homes will be built on the park by 2030. Chobham Manor, the first of these neighbourhoods, will start receiving residents in 2015. Demand has resulted in the acceleration of development in the East Wick and Sweetwater neighbourhoods, bringing forward completion from 2029 to 2023.

Approximately one-third of homes on the park developments will be affordable housing. Family homes will make up 70% of the available housing. These homes will be built to the latest sustainability standards: new play areas, schools, nurseries, community spaces, health centres and shops, as well as parkland and open spaces are being created. Alongside East Village, new community facilities have opened, benefiting both existing and new residents. A new school, Chobham Academy, opened in September 2013, offering free schooling for all ages alongside an advanced medical clinic, the Sir Ludwig Guttmann Centre, named after the founder of the Paralympic Games.

The legacy corporation is also working with the borough partners to ensure that training and job brokerage programmes help local people into work, so maintaining the positive work done by the Olympic Delivery Authority prior to the Games. For the current transformation workforce, the legacy corporation set targets that 25% would be from east London, 10% previously unemployed, 25% from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, 5% women, 3% disabled and 3% apprentices. These targets have been exceeded by a significant margin.

Some 20,000 jobs will be created by 2019, in addition to those already created by Westfield and other regenerated parts of east London, driven by the Games. This figure includes 5,300 jobs created by Here East—formerly iCITY—and a further 2,000 in the ensuing supply chain. The regeneration of Hackney Wick station is under way to kick-start work in the Hackney Wick/Fish Island area following £8.5 million of secured LEP funding. Some 4,421 jobs will result from the creation of housing, shops and other community facilities, and 250-plus jobs will be in the venues and stadium. There will be training and apprenticeship opportunities for the local community.

At a peak there were more than 1,000 workers on-site, and around 40% of the current on-site workforce live in one of the host boroughs. During a survey undertaken of the local workforce, more than 85% had been resident in one of the host boroughs for over a year. The legacy corporation is constantly working with the growth boroughs, partners and contractors to support apprenticeships and programmes to ensure that local employment targets are met.

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Here East is located in the former press and broadcast centres on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and will provide a new home with state-of-the-art infrastructure for the creative and digital industries. It will include a range of versatile spaces, bringing together global companies with London’s most innovative start-ups to collaborate and learn from each other. It will feature three main buildings: a 300,000 square foot innovation centre, a 1,045-seat auditorium, and an 850,000 square foot building housing educational space, broadcast studios, office space, and a state-of-the-art data centre.

Here East is being developed by iCITY; it is a joint venture between Delancey, a specialist real estate investment and advisory company, and Infinity SDC, the UK’s leading data centre operator. Here East has already secured a number of tenants and is over 40% pre-let. BT Sport is based at Here East with an 80,000 square foot production hub. That contains three industry-leading studios, 20 edit suites, three main interoperable galleries, four sports galleries, and an audience-holding area for a 160-strong audience. Loughborough University will create a multidisciplinary postgraduate teaching, research and enterprise facility. Hackney Community College will deliver its pioneering digital apprenticeship scheme within a new Tech City Apprenticeship Academy. Infinity SDC will develop one of the largest and most efficient data centres in Europe, featuring a 260,000 square foot gross internal area, fed by multiple power grids and providing 40 MVA of power with exceptional resilience.

On regeneration, in December 2013, plans were announced for the Olympicopolis project, a joint project between the legacy corporation, UCL and the V&A Museum to create an educational and cultural quarter on the park. This is a very exciting development which is expected to deliver an extra 10,000 jobs on the park and an additional £5.25 billion of economic value from the area. UCL is focusing on construction and finance, including what it can afford to contribute to development. The V&A is also exploring other cultural uses, as well as funding scenarios, including what can be funded by private sector development. We may bring in other partners and will determine the scope of our plans by the end of the year. We hope to make planning applications in 2015 subject to funding, and the Chancellor announced his commitment to backing plans for the creation of a major new higher education and cultural district on the park in December’s national infrastructure plan.

So much is happening, and those of us who have worked in east London for many years are delighted with progress to date, but there is still a great deal for all of us to do. There are of course some specific challenges, and I will highlight a few of them. First, we need to make sure that East Village is a “joined-up” community and that the disconnects between housing, education, health and business do not replicate themselves, as we have seen so often in government-led regeneration projects across this country. In my view, public sector bodies and businesses still have a great deal to learn about integration and the creation of joined-up communities. Governments should see the Olympic Park as an opportunity to innovate and learn about new ways in which to build dynamic, joined-up communities. This is still a challenge for large organisations, and we need

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to be encouraged to learn from and build on the local experience of building integrated communities in east London. Silo working will not get us anywhere.

The second challenge is to ensure that the developments on the park are fully integrated with the surrounding area. This will require focus and determination in the years to come. The third challenge is for the Government to tell a joined-up story about the developments that are happening down the lower Lea Valley, which stretch from those around the O2 and the Royal Docks; the airport, which is expanding; £3.7 billion of development in Canning Town; Canary Wharf, which may double in size in the next 10 years; a £1 billion development programme with local residents in Poplar; and the developments in Stratford and the Olympic Park. This is a new city growing in the East End of London—just join the dots. My colleagues and I will set this out at a major exhibition at ExCel in the Royal Docks from 3 May to 11 May, in partnership with Grand Designs Live, which will be called Walking on Water. Here I must declare a further interest. Noble Lords might like to come and have a look.