London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

It is actually the military principle of securing one's rear before one advances. There will be an unfortunate double entendre, if we are not careful. It is a well-defined principle of the Olympics, or it certainly has been in the 15 or 16 months of our work on the Olympics, that issues lie where they fall. Thus, despite the fact that my Department—the one that the right hon. Lady presided over before the election—has primary responsibility for the delivery of the Olympics, where detailed issues arise they lie with the Department that is primarily responsible for them. So anything to do with the management of overseas dignitaries lies with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, anything to do with Olympic security lies primarily with the Home Office and anything to do with transport lies primarily with the Department for Transport. So I feel a little bit like a duck caught in the shooting gallery this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) raised a great number of his concerns on Second Reading, and I undertook then to ensure that they were correctly raised with the Department for Transport. The note that I have been given assures me that that has been the case and, indeed, I believe that in his submission my hon. Friend acknowledged that the roads Minister has been closely involved. I suspect that the problem is that we have simply hit a brick wall, in that my hon. Friend does not want this particular scheme to happen but the roads Minister has given authorisation for it to proceed. There has been agreement that the work can proceed, and I believe that it is due to start imminently. The note that I have received states that the highways authority simply does not believe that there is a viable alternative. I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that I went to Weymouth to have a look at the test event at the beginning of August, when representatives of Dorset county council and the local authority were present. I did not get the opportunity to get held up at the Canford Bottom roundabout. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood will be delighted to learn that I set a good example and travelled by train, and so I did not have a chance to see this important roundabout. I must tell my hon. Friend that nobody in and around Weymouth, including Dorset county council, raised this with me as an issue in any way. Indeed, if one problem came out of that visit—the regatta itself was brilliantly organised and the local authorities are doing everything that they possibly can to deliver a successful regatta at Olympic time—it was the worry that on the super Sunday in the middle of the games, when Ben Ainslie stands a chance of breaking the record for sailing medals at the Olympics, most of the south-west will decamp to Weymouth, thereby gumming up roads for miles around. It was for precisely that reason that they needed to make improvements to the road network. As my hon. Friend knows, one of the reasons why Weymouth will be a great venue is that it is a fantastic amphitheatre, but the town, which is small and has small roads, has a capacity of about 8,000, I was led to believe. Their concerns are rather the reverse and that we should do everything possible to increase access. I simply do not know what more I can do at this point. It is not within my power as the Olympics Minister to halt these works and it never has been.