London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

I do not really want to delay the Committee or your Lordships for long but I felt this was possibly the right moment, particularly in the discussion about sports participation, to make an obvious point which I have made before in the Chamber. It is that the organising committee—LOCOG—is ostensibly a privately funded organisation. While we do not have direct responsibility for legacy in all its manifestations it is worth remembering that in our ability to deliver the Games, we have ostensibly to raise all our money from the private sector. We have done so with the support and largesse of world-class British businesses; some 44 of them have come to the table, making a contribution of £700 million towards that effort. That is not the main point I wanted to make. The main point is that while they bring that spend to the table, which allows us to deliver the Games, they also activate their sponsorships around any number of these ambitions. In sport, they have of course been very active in driving participation. It is not just about the response from the public sector, the Government, the Minister or the mayor, important as those are to the delivery of a sporting legacy. It is also worth remembering, for instance, that Lloyds Banking Group has already created local heroes, which is a fund for supporting networks of competitors and their support teams. National School Sport Week was a Lloyds-funded programme while by the time we get to 2012, Adidas will have completed 51 inner-city play zones. Across that piece, those companies have probably accounted for an increase of about 750,000 young people who are involved in sport through their sponsorships and activation programmes, while across the broader health-related fitness piece those partners have probably accounted for nearly 6 million people being involved in health and related fitness. I felt it was important to put on record the value that our private sponsorship has brought, not only to the funding of the Games but to our broader legacy ambitions.