London Olympics

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I have no declarable interests relating to the sustainability of the London Olympics, other than that more than a decade ago I was the founding chair of the all-party group on the Olympics. We formed the group to encourage a then hesitant Government to bid for the Olympic games. My father was an Olympian in 1936, playing as a Scotsman for the British football team—those were the days when the Scottish Football Association had no qualms about joining the football associations of the other home nations to field a strong British team. My point is simply this: if I am critical of aspects of the 2012 games, it is not because I am or ever have been antipathetic to the Olympics; it is because I care passionately that the games in London this summer should be the best ever staged and that nothing should be allowed to bring them into disrepute.

At the start, let me make common cause with the Minister in applauding much of the work done by the Olympic Delivery Authority in achieving so much of the vision of an Olympics that respects sustainability. I praise the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games for becoming the first games organising committee to be certified to the British standard 8901 specification for sustainability management systems for events.

I recognise that the Olympic Delivery Authority for London 2012 is creating venues, facilities and infrastructure that will leave a lasting social, economic and environmental legacy for London and the UK while minimising any other adverse impacts during the design and construction of the Olympic park, venues, infrastructure and housing. The creation of new infrastructure, sporting facilities and housing in an area currently experiencing high levels of deprivation will help to create neighbourhoods and vibrant places where people will want to live and work after the games are over. Communities are being reconnected by the building of more than 30 bridges across the waterways, railways and roads that currently divide the Olympic park area. All that is good.

The ODA has also sought to minimise carbon emissions associated with the development and to optimise efficient water use—indeed, many of the construction materials have been brought on site by barge via Prescott lock to reduce road traffic congestion. To reduce the risk of flooding in the Lea river valley, 100 hectares of new green space has been created. The ODA has worked with the construction industry to source environmentally friendly and ethically produced materials to produce a low-carbon construction footprint. Even rubbish and waste have been thought through: a contractor has been engaged specifically to compact and transport waste from site by barge, and 90% will be recycled or reused. For all that, John Armitt, the ODA’s chairman, and Dennis Hone, its chief executive, deserve Parliament’s thanks and praise. On the site itself, the ODA has spent in excess of £1.8 million cleaning up the toxic legacy of chemical contamination that blighted the area. The remediation of the site has brought the land back into public use and has been a wonderful focus to improve the environment and quality of life for people in that part of London.

What an irony, then, that this most sustainable of all Olympic games should embrace as one of its key sponsors a company whose name is inextricably linked with the worst chemical disaster in human history—a company that owns Union Carbide Corporation, which was responsible for up to 25,000 deaths that have been directly associated with the Bhopal gas tragedy in India. To this day, the company has failed to remediate the Bhopal site: the water table is now so contaminated that children in Bhopal are born with deformities at 10 times the rate elsewhere in India. In this debate, I will claim that the Dow Chemical Company, which owns Union Carbide Corporation, has failed to live up to the high corporate social responsibility standards that are supposed to characterise the Olympic movement across the globe and the London games in particular—standards that Lord Coe, the chairman of LOCOG, referred to in his evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport as ethical, social and environmental.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Union Carbide is different from Union Carbide India, and that Union Carbide was bought by Dow nearly 12 years after the Bhopal disaster? It would be good to clarify ownership.

[Barry Gardiner]

I assure my hon. Friend that I will address that point later in my remarks.

The sustainable sourcing code published by LOCOG states:

“Sustainability is one of a number of core elements which together represent what value for money means to LOCOG. As a result it will place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues when procuring products and services for the Games. This means we want to do business with responsible suppliers and licensees; companies who treat their staff and sub-contractors well, who understand the nature of the products and materials they are supplying, and who recognise their responsibility to protect the environment and foster good relations with their local communities.”

The Minister is here today to respond to this debate on behalf of the Secretary of State, who is, after all, the chair of the Olympic Board. With reference to the sustainable sourcing code, I challenge the Minister to provide justification on three distinct points relating to the appointment of Dow Chemicals Ltd as a sponsor of the London Olympics: first, the propriety of the procurement process itself; secondly, Dow’s legal responsibility for Union Carbide and the consequences of the Bhopal tragedy, which my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) mentioned; and thirdly, the wider ethical concerns about Dow’s practice as a company and its suitability as a sponsor.

I want to be sure that the Minister has no grounds to think that I have misled him, so I ask him to intervene on me at any stage if he thinks that I have misrepresented a fact pertaining to the case. If he does not I will assume that, although he may disagree with the conclusions I draw, he none the less accepts the facts as I have stated them.