London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

I am grateful for the representations made on these amendments and the way in which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, introduced them. The ODA will be expected to arrange with the relevant local authorities for cleaning and lighting to be provided in a specified way or to a specified standard during all or part of the Olympics period. The ODA can pay the authorities to carry out this work and arrangements can also be set out in the event of their failing to deliver the services as agreed. That is the intention. Agreements are to be struck and objectives are to be realised. I shall turn to the question of the Scotsman who cannot find the streetlight in a moment. It is intended that, within the normal parameters, the ODA work in consultation with local authorities. The trouble is that all the amendments would weaken the ODA’s ability to play this role effectively, and there is not a Member of the Committee who does not desire the end event. It has been suggested that there would be a danger of roads becoming too clean, pavements too well swept and lighting too effective. That is not an assertion that we normally hear from serious Members of this House, and certainly not those in another place, about the position in Britain. We will need to make significant efforts to improve the quality of these services, because none of us is complacent about the present standard. I remember, as certainly will noble Lords opposite, a Prime Minister coming back from elsewhere and being so shocked that she went to collect litter in St James’s Park to demonstrate that up with that she would not put. I hope that her noble colleagues are not suggesting that the Government are pitching standards too high in asking the ODA to carry out these operations in 2012. We want high standards. The question is how we achieve them. What we do not want are amendments that would detract from the ODA’s ability to reach these objectives. The standard expected of local authorities in any service-level agreement would have to be reasonable. I am advised that the Wednesbury agreement is not appropriate in these circumstances. Wednesbury reasonableness applies to decision-making in the public law context; for example, where a Secretary of State takes a decision. We are talking about reasonableness in a negotiation between two bodies and the deal to be struck on the effectiveness of the outcome. That is the concept of reasonableness in the Bill that I want to retain. The amendment is unnecessary because the relevant local authorities and the ODA will reach an agreement on what is reasonable. If they disagree on that, the agreement will not be struck. But that is the whole point: the ODA will set out terms and then it is for agreements to be arrived at and the price to be paid for those standards. Amendment No. 35 does not add to that at all. Amendment No. 36 would remove from the ODA the ability to stipulate what will happen when services are not delivered—services that have been agreed on a reasonable basis. That would place the ODA in a very odd position. In whatever service-level agreements are entered into, there will need to be a clear understanding about how, when and where the ODA might need to step in if a local authority does not do what it has agreed to under the bargain struck. That seems a perfectly normal feature of such agreements and I do not see how the amendment does anything other than weaken the ODA’s side of the bargain. Amendment No. 37 would require that the ODA indemnified local authorities against any effects of actions that it needs to take to use or repair street lighting, cleaning structures or installations. That may well be a sensible step, but this is a matter that local authorities will certainly take up. I recognise the fervour and effectiveness with which the noble Baroness presents her case—and I know how she carries the same fervour and effectiveness into her role in the GLA—but I presume those virtues to obtain with the local authorities that will be involved in these negotiations. They will ensure that when they strike agreements, they will do so carrying out the negotiations effectively in their terms. They will have a reasonably strong bargaining hand. We rely on sensible agreements between the ODA and local authorities, and I have confidence in them, as we all do. On the geographical scope, and our wandering Scotsman who does not have a streetlight, we do not expect the ODA to concern itself with all the roads between here and Glasgow but we want more than just the Olympic arenas to be covered. We want the approaches and the approach roads to look good, because this is a showcase for this nation. It not just about the stadiums; it is a showcase for everybody who is in London at the time of the games. Television cameras will focus on what happens in the arenas and on the sporting events—people pay very large sums for them to do so—but there will be enormous coverage of London and its surrounds at this time. Television cameras will explore all sorts of angles, in every sense of the word ““angles””, along with their crews and commentators. London will be a focal point, which is why the games are such a colossal gain to the nation in terms of the potential tourist traffic. All that means that London will have to look very good, and the present standards may not be good enough. The ODA must be able to make stipulations in those terms. My noble friend Lord Berkeley may think that only VIPs in their darkened limousines go on these roads, at excess miles an hour, so that it does not matter whether the road is clean or not, but we want the roads to be clean not only for them but for every member of the public. We are concerned about the elite because it will enjoy the same facilities but we are also concerned about everybody in London who is close to the games and wants to attend them; the whole area should look as good as possible. That will not, regrettably, stretch as far as Edinburgh, in terms of continuous street lighting or street cleaning, but it will go way beyond the immediate area of the Olympic venues. Surely that is a reasonable expectation. It may be suggested that the Bill’s language in that regard is too general. Of course, the major concentration will be on the relationships of the local authorities immediately adjacent to that site. We should, within the framework of the Bill, have an ODA that can deliver the best-looking games we have ever seen.