Wembley Stadium

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:00 pm on 23 May 2002.

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Photo of Baroness Blackstone Baroness Blackstone Minister of State (the Arts), Department for Culture, Media & Sport, Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) (Arts) 4:00, 23 May 2002

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Coe, is absolutely right about the importance of protecting the £120 million. I am sure that he will have seen the Sport England report that makes it clear that it is possible for an athletics platform to be put into the new stadium at considerably lower cost than would have been the case under the original concrete plans and that it can be installed and removed much more quickly.

With around 30 events a year, there should be no problem for those running the new national stadium to plan ahead for a major international athletics meeting. As the noble Lord knows very well, we are not of course talking about frequent athletics meetings—we could use Birmingham, Sheffield and Crystal Palace for national events. We are talking about the occasional international event of major importance. We should now celebrate the fact that we will at last have an international as well as a national location for athletics if the project comes off.

The noble Lord also asked about the PIU. The PIU project team will develop an overall strategy for guiding the Government's decisions on sports policy, including major events of the kind to which he referred. We expect the project to be completed in the summer.