Clause 30 - Distribution
Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Bill
10:00 am
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.