2012 Olympics (Legacy)

David Lammy Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right. That view is strongly held by the International Association of Athletics Federations and UK Athletics. Also, when the bid was submitted, a promise was made—it was a significant element of the bid—to retain athletics in the stadium beyond the games, and that promise will be broken if the track is removed. It is very important that we do not let that happen. My hon. Friend is right to underline how strong feelings about that subject are.

An open letter from the athletes sets out their position. They said:

“One of the most compelling aspects of our bid back in 2005 was the promise of an athletics legacy in the form of a world class stadium. This promise made the idea of legacy real. It showed that the Games would continue to touch the wider community long after the Olympics and Paralympic spectacular had left town.”

The letter was signed by a bevy of famous names, including Steve Cram, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Kelly Holmes and Daley Thompson. They are right—we should not break the promise that has been made. The provision of a world-class athletics track in the stadium after the games was one reason why the UK bid secured the crucial support ahead of the 2005 decision of Lamine Diack, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, and it is why the West Ham-Newham bid has the support of UK Athletics as well.

The proposal offers additional sporting benefits. It has the support of Essex county cricket club, which wants to be able to use the stadium, too. It will also be used for rugby. The bid is also being supported by Live Nation, the world’s biggest live events company, which describes the stadium as

“a superb venue for hosting major concerts and other events”.

Secondly, the bid represents the right solution for the local community, which is why the local authority is supporting it. The stadium will inspire learning and achievement, with thousands of local young people visiting each year to make use of its facilities. The university of East London and Newham college of further education will also have a role. The stadium’s legacy will include a studio school focused on sport and leisure, and the West Ham Playing for Success centre will relocate there.

West Ham has a thriving community sports trust involving 3,700 local people a week, and that will be strengthened further by a move to the Olympic stadium. Its training and mentoring scheme has produced 36 fully qualified coaches, all of whom were recruited from the borough. It has delivered PE at key stage 2 of the national curriculum to more than 50,000 pupils at the club’s Beckton training centre. The Minister has visited the centre, after which he rightly praised it for

“empowering young Londoners to take responsibility through sport and education”.

West Ham’s Asians in Football project engages with more than 36,000 youngsters a year and has been recognised and acknowledged by the Football Association as a national example of effective integration practice. Its multi-sports project delivers 14 sports in addition to football across the borough, and multi-sports coaching is provided to a wide range of people with disabilities. The British Heart Foundation recognises the men’s health project at West Ham for its engagement of men in a fitness and exercise programme.

There are discussions about using the stadium to widen cultural activities in Newham—the CREATE festival, arts development for local residents, and concerts and community music events—and it potentially has rehearsal space for local groups such as East London Dance. Such a full link to the local community would strengthen the potential for the health element of the proposals on the Olympic polyclinic. The bid’s success will boost jobs locally. Half the 1,000 hospitality and safety staff at Upton Park on a match day are from the local area, and that number is likely to grow if the bid is successful.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the West Ham bid largely involves the use of much of the existing stadium, while the alternative bid from Tottenham Hotspur involves dismantling the stadium? I know that he has immense Treasury experience, so does he think that destroying £500 million of taxpayers’ money to set about something new can be good value for money at this time of fiscal austerity?

[Stephen Timms]

I think that it would be a tragic waste of the investment that has been made and of the superb facility that we saw last night. It would be tragic if the facility was there simply for the brief period of the games. My right hon. Friend is right to underline the importance of retaining what has been achieved, which is impressive.

One thing that struck me at last night’s ceremony was the strength of local support for, and engagement with, what is happening in the Olympic park. Tessa Sanderson was there with a group of local young people who are training at her academy to compete in the 2012 games, and other local interests were also present. I hope that that local commitment will be harnessed to make the most of the stadium’s future with the existing building. We should not tear it down and start again, and the West Ham bid is best placed to achieve that.

West Ham’s Upton Park ground is in my constituency, and, as a local resident, I will be sad to see it go after more than 100 years. However, access to the new venue will be much better, especially by public transport, and the existing site could be redeveloped in a way that would strengthen the local community and the neighbouring shopping centre in Green street. The site would be very restricted if the club envisaged further development.

Thirdly, the West Ham bid makes business sense. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) pointed out, it does not involve tearing down a structure built with substantial public investment. The capital costs that the project would entail would be met from a combination of the funding made available by the Olympic Delivery Authority, the receipts from the disposal of the current ground at Upton Park and a loan facility provided through Newham council—not a grant, as has been suggested in some quarters, but a loan. The club has been able to show how it will meet its continuing liabilities, even in the highly unlikely event that its recent run of poor results continues and it spends next season in the championship, which I hope will not happen. For all three reasons—honouring our Olympic commitments, achieving a local solution and because the bid makes business sense—I hope that the West Ham bid for the future use of the stadium is successful.

Finally, I want to comment on the sporting legacy of the Olympic games, and the partial U-turn we saw from the Government yesterday when they reinstated at least some of the funding for school sport partnerships. We all agree that inspiring and supporting young people to be active in sport should be—must be—one of the biggest prizes from the 2012 games. It is welcome that the Government will not withdraw the funding entirely, following protests from schools and sports people, but it looks as though there will still be a drastic cut in funding for school sports—I have heard suggestions of an 80% cut.

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[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I welcome you, Miss McIntosh, on what I think is your first time in the Chair in Westminster Hall. It is good to see you. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber today as we approach Christmas and for illustrating that what lies behind sport, whether it is athletics or football, is hugely important to some of the poorest areas of London and of this country. I also want to thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) for his remarks on the West Ham and Spurs bids.

Let me go back to 6 July 2005 when we won the bid to host the Olympics. I will never forget that weekend. As Minister for Culture, I was very fortunate to be in Trafalgar square as the results were announced. I had a wonderful few years working with my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), my very good friend, when she was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. I saw the huge preparation that this country put into that bid and, I might say, fantastic leadership from my right hon. Friend. Many others provided leadership, too, but I was working closely with her at the time.

That weekend was a very poignant, because the day after the Olympics announcement London faced the most terrible atrocity—the London bombings—in which I lost a very dear friend. That weekend reminded us about the importance of multicultural London.

I remember also the Inspire video that was very much part of that bid. It was a wonderful production—I am sure it is still available on the web—that was directed by Daryl Goodrich. In that video, we see the fantastic sight of young people from across the world. Hon. Members will understand that, representing Tottenham, I felt very close to those young people because many of them make their way through different refugee channels or immigration routes to our great city, so somehow they were connected to that aspiration. We won that bid on a vision of very poor young people from across the world. I particularly remember the visions of Africa and Asia, dreaming and aspiring for something special in relation to the Olympics. We also won the bid because we were committed—particularly to young people in the east end and in communities such as mine—to setting a vision of what the Olympics and athletics could be about. It was on the back of those two things that we won this great prize. I remember when the word “London” was said and we secured the bid.

At the time, when I stood there feeling tremendous pride in the fact that sport brings opportunity to communities such as mine, I could not have imagined that, five years later, I would be participating in a debate about my constituency potentially being on the brink of losing one of its great beacons—our football club, Tottenham Hotspur. I say that as someone who grew up in Tottenham. I was always aware that when someone left the N17 postcode area and went much beyond it, either in this country or abroad, two things might be mentioned: the Tottenham riots—our shoulders sink at that and we feel a bit uneasy—and that wonderful vision of our football club.

I remember 1981, when Spurs won the FA Cup against Manchester City. Ricky Villa scored two goals and Garth Crooks scored another. I was a young nine-year-old born to West Indian parents from Guyana. Ricky Villa is from Argentina, so we adopted him as a South American, and Garth Crooks, one of our pioneering black footballers, scored a goal, so I felt tremendous pride. But that was against a backdrop in Tottenham of unemployment, serious grief, anguish and problems in relation to the police, and then, sadly, there unfolded some of the worst atrocities that we saw on the streets of London in our 20th-century history.

In our community, Spurs and football allow us to dream of what is possible. They bring us close to excellence and dedication. We see the commitment that young sportsmen and women put into becoming elite sports people, and that connects us with a standard that is not just local, but national and international. That is why it is so important that, when we consider the broader ecology of London, we do nothing that benefits one part of the city and, frankly, dumps on another part.

Northumberland Park is one of the very poorest wards in London. Unemployment there is just below 12%. Life expectancy is 10 years lower than it is 5 miles away in the other part of Haringey, Muswell Hill and Highgate. It is a ward with much deprivation. I am talking about not just Northumberland Park, but Edmonton, which borders it, and the London borough of Enfield. Hon. Members will understand that, because Tottenham rubs up close to that other, much smaller and less distinguished north London club, Arsenal, many Tottenham supporters hail from the London borough of Enfield.

Tottenham is not a club that one would greatly associate—I say this very gently—with some of the racism that has dogged other clubs in the premiership and in this country. The history of our bit of north London is very much a united history. The club includes West Indians who made their way to this country in the 1950s. There is a strong Jewish community, which is largely situated around Stamford Hill, although it stretches across to Golders Green, Finchley and parts of Enfield. There is also a strong Irish and white working-class community. All those groups have stood at White Hart Lane—very much in solidarity, always honouring and celebrating multiculturalism.

That is very special about Spurs, and probably about the north London tradition of football, which also includes teams such as Arsenal, Barnet and Enfield Town. We are very proud of that tradition, and it, too, is a symbol that we offer our young people. I think particularly of Northumberland Park school, which is just next door to Spurs on the site. The school has struggled with immense challenges. Some 40% of its young people get five good A to C grades. I also think of a school such as St Thomas More, just across the way in Wood Green. It has made sport its specialism, so how important it is to the school that Spurs is among the community.

It is important that I pay tribute to the work that Spurs have done while I have been the area’s Member of Parliament. The Tottenham Hotspur Foundation is a beacon in the premiership. The commitment that Spurs have shown to the wider community—not only in Haringey, but in Enfield, Barnet and Waltham Forest—is tremendous. The club is working not only with young people in our schools, but with pensioners and the disabled, and it is getting match funding. It is making a huge investment in local people and stretching the reach of elite sport deeper and further, so that we can lift up our deprived community.

The area represented by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham is identical to mine, so when he spoke of the Olympic stadium’s proximity to, and relationship with, his constituency and the schools within it, I completely understood how important the future of the stadium is to West Ham and to East Ham, up there in east London. I understood the vital role that it will play.

I have worked with Spurs; indeed, I worked on setting up the foundation. I have supported the club, as a constituency MP does, in the many immigration cases involving footballers coming into and going out of the country. The club also wanted to build a training ground in Enfield, and I was very supportive of that. In addition, it has exciting, truly exceptional plans to redevelop its stadium in Tottenham, and one can see those plans on the club’s website. The club put its planning application in to the local authority in May, it was approved in September and the Mayor has signed it off. We therefore have plans for an exciting new stadium in Tottenham, and those plans are supported by the local community. We have a new vision for a new period, building on 111 years of history.

Hon. Members will therefore understand how confused, upset and concerned my constituents were when they found out just a few weeks ago that the club was running a parallel track and also putting in for the Olympic stadium. I have spoken to the club’s chairman about that, and he has explained to me that it is important that he look at the Olympic stadium and consider its importance in relation to the club’s shareholder value. I have to recognise that, but it is my responsibility as the custodian of the community to remind the club and the politicians—in the end, they will make the decision, and here I look to the Minister—that sport does not come out of nowhere.

Tottenham folk have funded the club for 111 years. Also, it is always a great honour to bump into people who, although they may not have funded the club themselves, had grandparents who lived in Tottenham. Indeed, Lord Triesman’s grandparents lived in Tottenham, and there are always stories like that. Although someone might not live in Tottenham, they travel there because they have a connection to the area, and it would be a tremendous wrench if that were to be yanked from them.

When we look at the future regeneration and ecology of sport in London, it is our responsibility—I direct these comments also at the Mayor—to recognise that there is much to do in the east as regards the Olympic stadium and the West Ham bid. The future of athletics is also hugely important in that regard. However, we must also acknowledge that there is still a tremendous amount to do in my constituency and in the Enfield constituencies. That is why I have campaigned for many years with my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) for improved transport links. I wanted a Victoria line extension to link us up in a much bigger way—not only for the sake of the club, but for regeneration in my very poor part of London. I remind hon. Members that my constituency is the second poorest in London. That is hugely important.

What will be the prospects for Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield if the club makes this drastic switch? Such a decision would also be a great shame for West Ham over the next decade, because it would clearly cause the club great financial harm. That would be a real tragedy for the ecology of the premiership.

The Government face a very big decision, and I hope that they will reflect very hard when they get the recommendation from the Olympic Legacy Trust. It does not make sense to spend taxpayers’ money on a stadium—obviously, as a Minister in the Department at the time, I know that the amount involved was in part disputed, although I suspect that it is not any longer—and then destroy it four weeks later. That would resurrect real concerns about value for money. I suspect that the National Audit Office would want to look into it, and colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee certainly would.

At this time, when MPs such as I are seeing cuts to education maintenance allowance for our young people, the extension of tuition fees, cuts to housing benefit, hikes in unemployment and cuts to the future jobs fund, it cannot make sense to dismantle a stadium in that way. I must put that in the strongest possible terms.

It is also important that the Minister listen to fans and not just the club’s current custodians. I have seen the club change hands twice in my period as an MP and four times in my lifetime. Tottenham fans are already concerned about what is happening, and well over 4,000 have signed a petition. It is true that most think this will not happen. Most Spurs fans think, “Oh, this is a try-on, it can’t be serious.” Well, if it is serious that would be a great travesty.

I want to ask the Minister two questions. First, will he say something about the timetable for the decision? I am informed that the Olympic Legacy Trust board will meet on 28 January and hopes to make a recommendation to him after that. Will he confirm that the decision will be his, alongside the Mayor and the appropriate Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government? Who else will make that decision? Will he also confirm that he would expect the club to pay a bond, deposit or guarantee in the event of it winning, so in that sense the decision would be final? For example, West Ham would not be able to win the bid and say a few weeks later, “We’ve changed our minds and we want to stay at Upton Park,” and Spurs could not win and say a few weeks later, “Oh, we changed our mind and we want to stay at White Hart Lane.” That would make this a moment of urgency for both clubs as they reflect on their future. I am grateful for the opportunity to put those remarks on the record.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

I join other Members in congratulating you on your debut appearance in the Chair in this Chamber, Miss McIntosh. No one has mentioned it, but we all ought to congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) who has just been elevated to the Privy Council.

I add my personal thanks to the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell) for the extraordinarily constructive and inclusive way she managed the process when she was in charge. The past six months must have been difficult for her; to start a project of that sort, be as closely involved as she was and then, for reasons beyond her control, see it pass to someone else must have been difficult. I simply say that I am grateful to her for everything she did and for the way she has conducted herself since. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing the debate and on the way he made his points.

Given that time is short, I will try to answer the various questions that have been asked as best I can, rather than read the prepared speech, which I suspect might be rather familiar to the right hon. Lady. The right hon. Member for East Ham should have no fear about the political aspect, if that was a worry behind anything he said. The Olympic Park Legacy Company, chaired by Baroness Ford, is doing a fantastic job. She was appointed by the Government in which the right hon. Gentleman served and is a Labour peer—I think she may be a Cross Bencher now—so he should have no worries on the political front.

The right hon. Gentleman asked some good questions about jobs on the site. There are currently 10,333 people working either on the park or the village, of whom 25% and 29% respectively come from the six host boroughs. Genuine employment opportunities have been created, even before the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games brings forward its opportunities, or Westfield starts to recruit for the Stratford City development, which I am told will bring another 20,000 jobs to the area. If those forecasts are correct, the position looks reasonably promising. I enjoyed his suggestion about local residents and a local food court, and hope that he will manage to persuade his borough to take that up.

I absolutely take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s points about school sport. I think that we are all much happier with the position we are in now than the one we were in a week ago. To be fair to the Secretary of State for Education, it was a difficult decision. He had a budget that was subject to a 10% cut and had decided to hand the budgets over to schools, as the hon. Member for Bath noted. Once he had done that and given the schools a 0.1% increase above inflation, he was left with a very small pot, out of which he had to make his 10% cross-departmental cut. At the same time, he was trying to fund the pupil premium, which I guess will benefit many young men and women growing up in the borough of the right hon. Member for East Ham. It was an extremely tight financial settlement, and although I take on board the many points that have been made by the sports lobby, not a single one of them came forward and said, “Save this and cut the other”; it was all, “Save this spending”. Anyone who has had to go through a major deficit reduction plan will know the difficulties involved.

The stadium was the major part of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. He made a powerful case for West Ham, but I hope that he will not be offended if I say that it was not the first time I have heard that speech, or indeed the counter-offer from north London. He is absolutely right to say that I visited the West Ham community scheme about a year and a half ago when I was in opposition. It is a powerful scheme that does fantastic work in the community, and I pay tribute to it again, as I did at the time.

We are currently in the middle of a legal process, so I am unable to say a great deal more about that now, but I will come on to the dates and who is making the decisions in a moment. Clearly, it is massively to the benefit of the public purse that two extremely good and competitive bids are going forward. If I were to comment in too much detail one way or the other, however, I would open myself up to judicial review. Having been a distinguished Minister in the previous Government, the right hon. Gentleman will know that landing the Government in the High Court is not normally a role for junior Ministers, so I will leave it at that and simply say that the process is ongoing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) talked about the financial aspects. On the village, I can assure him that there are nine high-quality bids, as the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said. I do not think that I am breaking any confidences when I say that that was considerably more than we expected. There is a great deal of interest in what is being built on the park, and almost everyone who goes there is—to use a nasty, modern phrase—blown away by it. There is considerable investor interest in large parts of it, so I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood is right about the hotel rooms; they are not being paid for from the public budget, and many of the bodies occupying them—the international federations and the rest—are simply billed for them. It is not some great state-sponsored beano in which people will be living at the Dorchester at huge public cost.

In a very good speech, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) spoke of his passion for the bid. I was lucky enough to be with the hon. Member for Bath and the right hon. Lady in Singapore at the time, and I thank the right hon. Member for Tottenham for the role he played. He made a powerful speech about Tottenham. I hope he will be impressed to know that I have also visited the Tottenham Hotspur community scheme; indeed, he will be doubly impressed to hear that I did so during black history week. There were many people in the stadium at Tottenham studying the very first black player to play for Tottenham.

[Mr Lammy]

Walter Tull.

[Hugh Robertson]

The very man. They had all drawn him, were learning about him and putting that into context. Crucially, I was told that there was a reading skills course, which I think had been running for seven weeks when I visited, and the average literacy age increased by 18 months over that period. It is a fantastic scheme, and the right hon. Gentleman is right to pay tribute to it.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the time, but he will appreciate that the remarks I made earlier apply to what I can and cannot say about the process. He is absolutely right that the initial decision will be made by the OPLC board on 28 January. It will then be confirmed, and eventually due diligence will start. I am absolutely sure that some form of deposit or bond will be taken from whichever preferred bidder emerges from that stage, and the decision will then come back to the founder members of the OPLC board—the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Mayor of London. Those three bodies will take on that scheme, and that arrangement was set up under the previous Government. I hope that answers all the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about the process.

[Mr Lammy]

Does the Minister expect that the eventual decision will be a political decision on the recommendation of the trust, some time after 28 January?

[Hugh Robertson]

The current timetable, all being well—clearly that depends on due diligence and the various things that have to be gone through with the preferred bidder—is for the decision to be announced by the end of the financial year, so by the end of the first quarter of 2011. I would imagine that 1 April 2011 would be a good planning date. Like all decisions, it will be a balance; value for public money, the legacy and promises that we have made will all be considered.

The hon. Member for Bath made a customarily good speech. With regard to tourism, he is right to identify the gap between the ending of RDAs and the start of LEPs as a concern. We are looking at that process with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I absolutely take on board his remarks about county sports partnerships. One of the things that has come out of the slightly tortured process of the past three months is the question of whether we are making enough use of CSPs, which tend to vary in quality, depending on the area in which they are sited, who is in them and who is running them. There is certainly room to bring the two closer together.

The hon. Gentleman also touched on international inspiration, which has not formed part of the debate. I do not know how many Members picked it up, but we were able to confirm the full funding from the Department for International Development for the remainder of the International Inspiration scheme, which is a considerable step forward.

I thank the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) for his contribution. He made the case for Spurs to remain at White Hart Lane. I am probably in danger of overreaching my brief, but I am not sure that that is an option B, as all the information I have seen indicates that Spurs is pursuing that option very seriously indeed. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) made a powerful case in favour of West Ham, and I wish him well for the Boxing day fixture. Time is running out, so I thank all Members who have spoken in the debate for their contributions, particularly the right hon. Member for East Ham, and wish everyone a happy Christmas.