London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Baroness Ford and Lord Myners

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

When the Minister responds to this amendment, it would be helpful to know whether the current expectation is that government Ministers will be able to take advantage of the speedy travel to the Olympic centres and back to their homes; or whether they will travel with the rest of us by the same mechanisms that they deem appropriate for the rest of the population. It is a very simple question to which I hope we will get a very straightforward answer.

[Baroness Ford]

My Lords, as someone who has been very closely involved with the preparation of the Games, I should like to make one or two points that I hope might be helpful to noble Lords in thinking this through. I think that there will be two classes of people travelling to the Olympics. There will be lunatics who want to go by car, and there will be very sensible people who do what I do every other day, which is to take the Tube—the Central line, the District line or the Jubilee line—to Stratford. There is no better way to get to E20 than by public transport. Anyone who imagines that there is a better way of doing it plainly never makes that journey.

I have also made that journey frequently over the past two or three years during August. It is like living on a different planet. The travelling experience at the end of July and the start of August is completely different from the experience at any other time of year. It is partly that cyclical change in travel patterns that has led us to believe that there will be less pressure during the Games period than there would be at normal times. That may be a vain hope, because people may decide to stay in London. However, experience shows that during that period there is something like a 30 per cent drop-off—the Minister will probably correct me—in passenger transport in the Tube.

The planning that has been put in place is by no means sanguine. One has only to think back to the opening of the Millennium Dome to understand how a poor transport set-up can absolutely mar an occasion and completely destroy its reputation. However, bearing all of that in mind, and thinking through all of that planning, I think that the work that has gone in to arranging the travel plans for the Olympics has been well thought through; by no means has it been complacent or sanguine. It is right to urge people to take public transport. Those who use the Central, Jubilee or District lines to Stratford—and we hope that people will use the Javelin trains from St Pancras too—will realise that, out of peak hours, those trains are virtually empty. There is plenty of capacity there. If people plan their routes properly and choose their times sensibly, I think that they will have a good experience going to and from the centre of London to Stratford.