Sport and the 2012 Olympics Legacy

Stephen Hammond Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I wholeheartedly agree that “squandering” is totally wrong. The reason the International Olympic Committee said that London offers a blueprint to the rest of the world is that it has been around other post-Olympic cities and seen, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the buddleia sprouting from the athletics tracks and the dustbowl stadiums. It has come to the Olympic park and seen the exact opposite: all seven key venues with a long-term private sector solution and contractor.

Since the park opened only a year ago, 800,000 people have gone to the swimming pool, 600,000 have gone to the VeloPark, 600,000 to the Copper Box, and tens of thousands to the Lea Valley hockey and tennis centres. As Members have pointed out repeatedly, we are about the only Olympic city on record to have solved the problem of what to do with the stadium. We have a long-term future for the stadium, in spite of the catastrophic errors made by the previous Government. There will be not only premiership football, but rock concerts, baseball, rugby and all manner of entertainments. Our park in east London is going to be a centre of sporting excitement for generations to come. The Secretary of State rightly listed a procession of world championships: athletics, rugby, hockey, wheelchair rugby, swimming and so on.

We are succeeding in getting people from the poorest boroughs to play sport and to take part. Some 45,000 people have taken part in the Active People, Active Park project and 26,000 have enjoyed Motivate East, a programme to get disabled people more active in sport. I am absolutely confident, as my friend the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) rightly said, that those numbers will continue to rise. The area is changing out of all recognition.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge the excellent work being done to engage schools and clubs to make sure that more grassroots sport is played by schoolchildren?

[Boris Johnson]

Absolutely—I acknowledge that completely. I acknowledge, too, the work of the grassroots sports teams. Much of that success flows from the increasing prosperity we are seeing in east London and at the Stratford site.

The village is already complete and occupied, with 4,800 new inhabitants. We have the largest green park in the UK for a century. Some 24,000 homes will be built on the site, many of them low-cost and family homes. That would not have happened without the Olympics. We will have tens of thousands of new jobs as a result of the Olympicopolis project, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State identified and which the Government are rightly funding. Just this very morning—in another capacity, I am happy to say—I was privileged to give planning permission for a new tech hub on Fish Island in Hackney Wick, an absolutely beautiful structure that will echo the Victorian warehouses there and incorporate all kinds of artist studios and tech start-ups. It is inconceivable that that kind of private sector investment would have come to that part of London without the Olympics. That is a phenomenal legacy.

Two university campuses are going to the Stratford site: not just a £270 million new campus for University College London, but a campus for Loughborough University, one of the great sporting universities in the world. Their mission is to help local kids to take up sport. I totally agree with the hon. Member for Vauxhall that taking up sport is not just a symptom of prosperity; it is a cause of prosperity. That is why she and I have campaigned so hard on this issue. I am proud to say—she is absolutely right—that we have had 400,000 more people doing some kind of sport since 2012 in London, which is a point that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) totally failed to concede. Sporting participation, as well as every other kind of legacy, is up in London.

The London Olympic and Paralympic games of 2012 boosted sport across the city in which they were held. They are transforming east London and the lives of some of the poorest people in our society. As several Members have rightly pointed out, they have left a legacy of volunteering and engagement, which we are continuing to support through Team London, and they have brought untold billions of investment into this country. They projected an image of London around the world that was so attractive and so exciting that, for the third year running, we are going to achieve what we have never before achieved in my lifetime—to be the No. 1 tourist destination in the world, knocking Paris and New York off the No. 1—

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I am grateful to you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I shall bear your stricture in mind. Of course I had a great speech to make, but given what you have said and given that some of what I was going to say has already been said more eloquently by others, I shall make just two points.

It was a great privilege for me, nearly 10 years ago, to congratulate the then Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell, on bringing the Olympics to London, and on her assurance that the work to secure a legacy would be done on a cross-party basis. I therefore found it disappointing to see the word “squandered” in the motion. I do not think that any analysis of the regeneration to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred, along with the cultural legacy and the increase in participation that we have seen—notwithstanding some of the more recent falls—would prompt the use of that word. As Lord Coe said, the Olympics lit up the world and inspired a generation.

Let me make a serious comment. Perhaps those who want to use the word “squandered” should consider the legacy itself. There are a couple of points that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) did not make in his speech. First, a legacy is not something that happens two or three years after an event. The legacy of the Olympics will be judged by whether we have champions in 2020, 2024 and 2028, because that is where the grassroots come in. However, the hon. Gentleman was right to say that from 2005 onwards—and, indeed, from 2012 onwards—participation in sport had increased, but since October 2014 the increase has begin to tail off. That information comes from Sport England’s campaign for active participation in sport. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman wants to query it, but it is true.

The question that we must ask ourselves is whether we can sustain the legacy, and that is not true only of the Olympics. As many Members will know, I represent one of the greatest constituencies, and it is going to host a little tennis tournament next week. I remember being told time after time in the House that the legacy in that regard was that we were not producing champions, despite the money being spent year on year by the Lawn Tennis Association.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

In the context of participation in tennis, is it not a disgrace that the Labour-run council in my constituency closed the public tennis courts and then put money into private tennis courts that only the most affluent can afford? The Scottish Government are trying to improve access—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Interventions are meant to be short. Members must not just come out with lists. I am sure that the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) has understood the hon. Lady’s point. I am trying to save time so that Members who have been waiting all day have an opportunity to speak.

[Stephen Hammond]

Given your stricture, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will not respond to the hon. Lady’s intervention,

My second aim in this short speech was to—well, to get the press release in, obviously. I would have liked to say more about the legacy, but our legacy in Wimbledon is a new floodlit BMX track, which is open, is being used and has a growing membership, and the new beach volleyball courts that have opened in Wimbledon Park, which also has a growing membership. London, in contrast to a number of other places, is experiencing growing participation in sport, and I think that that is part of the Olympic legacy.