London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

I think the Minister has misunderstood the argument, which is not about the line of accountability. I am entirely prepared to accept what he says—that the line of accountability is through the Secretary of State and Parliament. I have no difficulty with that proposition. But if he is saying that the responsibility of this body is simply to send in an annual report, and if its planning committee will do its business in public, with the GLA having a bit of input, I think that we are missing something. The ODA’s work will be of deep interest not only to Parliament and the GLA but to the public generally, who will want to have some indication of what it is doing and why. I entirely accept the problems of the commercial nature of much of the operation, but those are adequately defined in the Local Government Act and can be perfectly taken care of. But for the life of me I cannot see why, when the ODA meets from time to time, the public should not have some right to attend some of that meeting, or why some of the content of the meeting should not be reportable. People will want to know what is going on—and not only in an annual report that will appear six months after the end of a financial year and be reported to the Secretary of State, who will report it to Parliament. That is not what they will want to know. They will want to know what is happening now—not next week or next month, but now. I feel very strongly about this matter. If the Government maintain their current approach, they will be missing a trick.