Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) on securing the debate and on her excellent contribution.

As a result of the games, West Ham will look very different in 2012. Two thirds of the Olympic park and the majority of the facilities, including the athletes village, the main stadium, the swimming pools, media centre and the warm-up tracks will be in Newham, and 18 of the 26 events will take place within a 20-minute walk of Stratford station. The stadium will be built to accommodate 80,000 people—reduced to 20,000 after the event, which, to be honest with the Minister, disappoints me. I ask you to consider again the sweet deal that Manchester's residents got from the Manchester Commonwealth games.

Mr. Edward O'Hara (in the Chair): Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she is addressing the Chair.

Lyn Brown : I apologise sincerely, Mr. O'Hara. I sometimes get carried away with my enthusiasm. 
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I want the Government to reconsider the sweet deal done for Manchester after the demise of the Commonwealth games, to ensure that there is access for some of the poorest people in our communities to the world-class facilities that will be built in my area.

I hope that hon. Members forgive me if I talk a bit about my constituency. It is poor, bordering other poor areas to the west and north. All Newham's key indicators with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are in the bottom 10. Almost 7 per cent. of economically active residents said that they were unemployed, compared with just over the 4 per cent. average for London. Two thirds of Newham's children are considered to live in poverty. People in Newham die earlier than people anywhere else in London. We also have the lowest employment rate in the country.

Hon. Members may wonder why I am giving those statistics in a debate on sporting excellence and the Olympics. I am doing so because bringing the Olympics and Paralympics here is part of the solution to the poverty and disadvantage experienced by the communities of West Ham and other places with similar problems in east London.

We said in our bid that we would radically transform London's east end by having a sporting spectacle to regenerate a poor inner-city area. That is the greatest challenge. I know that those responsible for the planning, designing, building and staging of the games must think that they have the hardest task, but the hardest task will go to those who are attempting to realise a legacy in the soft infrastructure—the soft regeneration—that is so crucial to that part of London.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch said, the hardest job will be securing jobs and retraining for those in our communities who are currently without them. The other hard jobs will be to raise the aspirations of our children in those communities for them to realise their full potential, to realise the health benefits for all those in our poorest communities, and to ensure that afterwards we narrow the gap between those who are living longer in richer, more affluent communities and those living in poorer communities.

The potential social legacy is huge and complex, and we have not yet fully thought through the true extent of the detailed implications. I got a tiny sense of what we could achieve from the impact that the bidding process had on my constituency. As my hon. Friend said, the London borough of Newham has led a two- year programme of sporting, cultural and community activity, and by the end of the process there were tangible benefits.

Some 43 per cent. of those taking up free swims came from social groups D and E, and there were 64,000 attendances at Newham's Olympic summer of sport. The completion rates for exercise-on-prescription schemes for people suffering from ill health increased from 34 to 52 per cent. Some 40 new after-school clubs have been founded around sport and physical activity, and the number of sports coaches in my borough has doubled. For the first time, there has been a 25 per cent. drop in the number of young people who have been reported to the local magistrates court. I believe that that is because of the sporting and other interventions made under the programme. New disability sports clubs have also been established, and West Ham United's wonderful programme of football for Asian communities has expanded.

Those schemes could not have taken place without additional money, and we used the neighbourhood renewal fund to pay for them. If we do not plan to secure such social benefits, or do not understand what social benefits we need to secure, we will not fund them or design interventions. At the end of the games, we will find that we have not secured a real legacy—the soft legacy—for the communities that desperately need one. The job before us is too big for just one tier of government and it cannot be done by local, regional or national Government alone. It can be carried out successfully only if we include all tiers, as well as the voluntary sector, the community sector and the private sector.

The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) mentioned jobs and businesses. I ask the Government to oversee the development agency and to hold it to account to ensure that it discharges its duty to the local community and minimises the downtime to the sustainable, valuable businesses in the area so that they can remain there.

The games will also result in the demolition of the housing co-op at Clays lane. I recently had representations from the tenants, who face a very uncertain future. Communication seems to have been sparse and not very comforting, with the LDA apparently watering down assurances that were made prior to the bid. I ask the Government again to see what they can do to offer some comfort and to hold the LDA to account.

Mr. Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op): I agree with my hon. Friend and understand her passion for what the Olympic games will achieve. She mentioned the difficulties faced by the Clays lane housing co-op. Does she agree that one legacy of the Olympics will be the more than 4,000 units of housing accommodation? Does she also agree that it is important that those units are affordable for the people who live in the five boroughs?

Lyn Brown : Indeed I do. In fact, that is mentioned in the longer version of my speech. I intended to talk about the fact that housing accommodation will be secured not only in London, but up and down the country, where visiting teams establish training camps. We need to ensure not only that that housing is affordable, but that it creates sustainable communities that people up and down the land can access.

In conclusion, the legacy of the games could be amazing. For that to happen, however, we need to plan. To fail to plan is to plan to fail.