Clause 4 - General functions
London Olympics Bill
3:15 pm
Richard Caborn (Minister of State (Sport), Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Sheffield Central, Labour)
Such scepticism is healthy. If any success relating to these Olympics can be measured to date, it is that of the lottery. It has already banked the first 2 million quid; it sold out of tickets well before Camelot believed it would. There was a relaunch a couple of weeks ago that has been hugely successful. There is a real appetite on the part of the lottery for supporting the Olympics nationwide. My personal view is that during these first few months, everything is looking extremely rosy on that side of things.
We should not remove the disciplines. There are disciplines on the Mayor's office, which is working in partnership to deliver. We are not going to take that responsibility away from it; nor would it take away from the Government our responsibility to ensure that we deliver. Within that discipline, we shall deliver on time and on budget. If things are not on budget, we shall sit down and find a resolution, as we have on every bit of this project to date.
The Mayor may or may not go for extra resources to the council tax payer, the LDA or other areas that might be in his budget at that time. I do not know, but we are closing no options off, and believe that the discipline is there for everybody to deliver on time and on budget. In the hon. Lady's mind there may be some uncertainties for council tax payers; that, unfortunately, is something that we will have to live with. However, I hope that she will acknowledge that what we have put in place is as transparent and robust a structure for management and budgeting as at any Olympic games today.