Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

There is one issue that I want to raise. We debated amendment No. 72 in an earlier group, when we sought to persuade the Government to add a new paragraph to clause 30(2). I now want to discuss subsection (4)(a), which relates to expenditure for the provision of facilities outside London. The Minister will appreciate that the shooting events at a 2012 Olympics would be at Bisley, which is in my constituency and straddles the border with that of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). I have spent a lot of time talking to people there. They have already had an expansion in their facilities to host the shooting events at the Manchester Commonwealth games. I was lucky enough to be able to go to watch those and was asked to present some of the medals, which was a great privilege.

As the Minister will recognise, it will undoubtedly be necessary to create many new facilities outside London, not only for shooting at Bisley but for sailing, which is anticipated to be in Weymouth, and other things—training camps and so on. In particular, there

will be a need to create facilities for sports such as rowing. I am grateful to the Minister for his answer yesterday to a written question of mine, relating to concerns that had been raised with me and my hon. and right hon. Friends about rowing, a sport of particular interest to my noble Friend Lord Moynihan, who was a distinguished Olympic silver medal winner at the Moscow games. The Amateur Rowing Association is concerned about the fact that it needs to host the world cup in 2005 and the world rowing championships in 2006, both at Dorney lake. I was delighted to note from the Minister's answer that provision is being made for rowing, but there will no doubt need to be more if, as we all hope, we are successful in our bid for the 2012 Olympics.

I therefore ask the Minister to expand a little on what the Government have in mind for other sports that might be covered by grants or loans. I appreciate that it is very early to be certain about these matters, but I am glad that we have specific provision in subsection (4)(a) for grants or loans for facilities outside London. If the Minister has other sports in mind, I would be grateful if he would indicate those to us. In particular, I am sure that he will want to confirm for the record that shooting, rowing and sailing are three of the sports for which it is envisaged that, in a successful Olympics, the facilities would have to be outside London.

Mr Richard Caborn (Minister of State (Sport and Tourism), Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Sheffield Central, Labour)

We are a long way from 2012. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that the Government are taking sport very seriously indeed. He will recall that, on announcing our intentions for the Olympics, we announced another £100 million of investment in sports facilities. I know that we are having to catch up a bit because previous Administrations did not invest in sport to the same degree as us, but we are doing our best to ensure that there are new, high-quality facilities, not just for the Olympics, but for sport more widely.

Turning to rowing, I can tell the Committee that, on the back of the great success of our rowers in Sydney and with the help of a number of schemes throughout the country, young people are going into rowing in a way that we never believed possible.

I, too, went to the shooting event at the Commonwealth games. Millions of pounds were spent on that facility, which has been well used beyond the Commonwealth and the Olympic games. If it is necessary to upgrade that, we shall do so. The same applies to sailing. I have been to Weymouth on a number of occasions. It is a fantastic centre of excellence for sailing, probably one of the best in Europe, and it has helped to regenerate the marine sector. It is good to see the regional development agency set up by the Labour Government when they came to power in 1997 working closely with the authorities and the governing body to ensure that it is a state-of-the-art facility now, let alone in 2012. We shall continue to invest in that and, indeed, in other facilities around the country.

I hope that, when the evaluation committee comes to the UK, it will see that we are not investing just for the Olympics, although that is important; we are

putting huge sums into the nation's sporting infrastructure, and we shall continue to do so in the coming years.

Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)

I am grateful to the Minister for putting his comments on the record.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.