Schedule 1 - The Olympic Delivery Authority
London Olympics Bill
9:45 am
Richard Caborn (Minister of State (Sport), Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Sheffield Central, Labour)
In my usual generosity, I have put together a little diagram that I think will be extremely useful in explaining the structure, and I will pass copies around. I am very pleased, and I shall tell the Committee why. As we were going in to the Olympic Committee, it was well known that there was a lot of discussion on the lines of ''Do we, don't we?'' The Secretary of State and I, and others, went round the world asking a simple question of those cities that had run the games: it was, ''What would you have done differently if you were to do it again?'' I went to Sydney, Munich, Moscow, Athens, Beijing—obviously—and Barcelona. They were very generous, honest and frank with their advice. I say that because it became patently obvious to us that in order to run such a seven or nine-year project, three sets of skills are required. One set of skills is needed to win the games; one to deliver the big construction projects; and another to deliver the games themselves. We did incredibly well in putting those skills sets together to deliver the highly successful result on 6 July. We now have a structure that delivers the other two skill sets, with the accountability of the three main stakeholders, the BOA, the Mayor and the Government. That is the over-arching stakeholder, but there is also the ODA.
As I have told the Committee, the advert for the ODA chair and chief executive went out, and we are looking for the best in the world. There were in excess of 27,000 hits on the website. I have forgotten how many people actually downloaded the application form, but it ran into thousands. That showed to us that this will be the most prestigious construction programme, if not in the world, then definitely in Europe. It will rank bigger even than terminal 5. We are looking to put skills sets together that will be second to none, and that will deliver this type of project over a period of five, six or seven years. The guts of what we are talking about in this Bill is setting up the ODA. LOCOG, under the very able chairmanship of Lord Coe, and backed up by Keith Mills, as can be seen on the diagram, will deliver the games on behalf of the IOC. I gave the diagram to the Committee because it explains the structure in a way that words cannot. I hope that the Committee will acknowledge that. It is quite unique in Olympic delivery to have been able to deliver those three skills sets in a managed way. In Sydney the chief executive was changed about four times. The changes were to enable different people to do certain things at certain times. I do not know how many times they changed in Athens, but some would say that the construction side was not run quite as efficiently as it was in Sydney. Sydney was a slightly better model for us to look at.
These amendments all relate to important matters of governance and accountability. The ODA will be an executive non-departmental public body spending large amounts of public money and there must be a clear and direct line of accountability to the Secretary of State in those areas. We have given the Mayor of London consultation rights relating to appointments to the ODA, directions issued to it and its eventual dissolution. That is perfectly right, as the Mayor will be supplying a significant portion of the funding through a council tax precept. But we do not think the same rights should be given to the LOCOG chair.
It is right that the chair of LOCOG has a role in the overall governance of the Olympic project, through the Olympic Board. But the LOCOG chair should not have any supervisory role over the ODA chair. The two will do different but complementary jobs. LOCOG is involved informally through the Olympic board. That route of setting the main policy structure of the board is important. That is where the LOCOG chair will have an influence in a broad sense on the policy directions of the ODA. With that explanation, I hope that the hon. Member for Bath will withdraw the amendment.