I am almost at a loss for words when I try to describe the pride and anticipation that I felt when London was chosen as the venue for the 2012 games, and my delight that the Olympic park—centred in my constituency—is now starting to take shape. The clearing of the site and the initial infrastructure works are going well, despite a few unexpected changes. The power lines that blighted the skyline of the area for years are now being dismantled, and work continues to improve the waterways and the surrounding park, breathing new life into what were, quite literally, the backwaters of the east end of London. The stadium is emerging from the ground, and the seating support structure is already in place for all to see. An area that was a post-industrial polluted wasteland is well on the way to becoming the parklands of the Olympic site.

However, today’s debate is focusing not on the progress being made with the construction—impressive though that might be—but on the Olympic legacy. I want to focus not just on the sporting and cultural legacy—important though they will be—but on the entire legacy of the games. This is unashamedly a speech by a local MP advocating on behalf of her constituents. As I do not have much time this afternoon, I am not going to reiterate the many reasons why I am standing on my feet making this speech. I am not going to give the House a statistical analysis of the poverty in London—a London which, despite City bonuses and high incomes, is also a London of real economic deprivation and hardship, in which many struggle to survive. Newham is the fourth poorest local authority in London. Its neighbours—and fellow Olympic host boroughs—Tower Hamlets and Hackney are the poorest and second poorest respectively.

The London bid for the games was predicated on leaving behind an important legacy for my constituents. The bid documents stated that

“by staging the Games in this part of the city, the most enduring legacy of the Games will be the regeneration of an entire community for the direct benefit of everyone who lives there”.

The ambition of the bid was big, but not unachievable. The games present us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real, positive difference to an entire community in, arguably, the poorest area of the country. It is for this obvious reason that the Olympic and Paralympic games must not simply be a fabulous sporting and cultural spectacle for a few weeks in the summer of 2012. They must become a mechanism for leaving lasting improvements in the health, housing, employment and skills of Londoners. To spend that amount of money and not achieve a lasting positive legacy would be obscene.

The legacy commitments promised to east London were outlined in a document released at the beginning of the year, entitled “Five legacy commitments”. The commitments included a new urban park, which we were assured would be “world-class”, and an Olympic village of just under 3,000 affordable homes, of which it was stated:

“After the Games, retained venues and new parklands will provide local people with places to spend their leisure time”.

The document goes on to say:

“The Aquatics Centre will be open for community use and the Polyclinic, a medical services unit for athletes during the Games, will be transformed into a primary care centre for local residents.”

That sounds sensible: the swimming pool is to be used by the local community and a new health facility will be in situ for the new community being built in Stratford.

But there appear to be some problems. The Olympic aquatics centre was to have had a community leisure and fitness facility built next to it and linked to it. The London borough of Newham—and, to a lesser extent, the London borough of Tower Hamlets—had pledged financial support to build this important community facility. Such a centre would provide local communities with additional access to much-needed sport and fitness facilities. But I understand that these proposals may have been dropped, and that this legacy proposal, with the potential to improve the health of the local community and widen its access to sports facilities, appears to have been abandoned.

The aquatics centre, which was intended to be the landmark Olympic venue, is now to be the only swimming pool of its size in the western world in recent memory to have been built without community use as part of the scheme. Sadly, it has also emerged even more recently that the health centre will not materialise. Instead of a permanent athletes medical centre, we are to receive a temporary facility, to be built for the games and demolished afterwards. And the stadium! This field of dreams still does not have any post-2012 tenants who can work with the community to provide affordable multi-use facilities. Unfortunately, it now seems too late for it to benefit from the interest expressed many months ago by an excellent local premier league side—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you.

The international broadcast and press centre, a key legacy commitment to boost a growing telecommunications and information technology industry, also appears to be facing an uncertain future. Potentially, this project has the scale and impact to deliver a legacy promise of transformation. It would be an immeasurable loss of opportunity if it were not retained to be used as a catalyst for sustainable high-tech industry. Just as ominous are the indications not only that the athletes’ village is being further downsized, with more athletes sharing fewer apartments, but that the private sector financing for this key part of the project now seems to have dried up. Government funding now seems crucial to the project.

In Newham alone, we have more than 20,000 families on the housing waiting list, and more than 5,000 families housed in expensive temporary accommodation, often making it impossible for people to work and to pay their rent, as they are reliant on benefits to keep a roof over their heads. I would like to press the Minister to consider intervention to ensure that after the games, we use the athletes village to alleviate some of the desperate housing need in the area, and to provide a genuinely mixed-use development of family homes. It would be a very positive move if the new Homes and Communities Agency could take an active role in the funding and design of the Olympic village to ensure community benefit from a significant build of new and potentially affordable housing on site.

There are other legacy opportunities that are not building-based, and I congratulate the Government on investing in the local employment and training framework, which has provided skills and employment to thousands of people. I am told that 24 per cent. of workers employed on the Olympic park site now originate from one of the five host boroughs.

Ms Abbott: Does my hon. Friend agree that although the Government are to be congratulated on what they have done so far, the number of people from the Olympic boroughs employed on the Olympic park remains regrettably low, however much that fact may dismay contractors and their representatives? One way in which the big contractors are getting round and massaging the figures for local labour is by bringing labourers from all over Europe into the Olympic boroughs and putting them in hostels. Those labourers are then counted as local people, but in fact they have been shipped in from all parts of Europe. To provide a lasting legacy in boroughs such as Hackney, which have high crime rates, we need to offer our young people real opportunities to work.

Lyn Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What concerns me about these figures is that we have no method of monitoring whether these are truly local people or simply workers temporarily resident in the local area in order to obtain employment. My community has a rich history of welcoming people from all over the world, but the one thing that they ask of such people is that they stay and become part of the community so that they contribute to the fabric in which we live. Unfortunately, some people are coming in and living temporarily or “hot-bedding” in small domestic homes, creating difficulties in local communities, and they will leave as soon as the work has finished. What we need is a methodology able truly to track whether the people counted in these surveys are indeed local people.

It is also sad to note that only an estimated 6 per cent. of those currently working on Olympic sites have arrived through apprenticeships or Olympic training programmes. Given the high unemployment in Newham and surrounding areas and the documented lack of formal training and skills owned by members of those communities, I urge the Government to do all they can to increase these figures for the long-term economic future of the borough.

The legacy of the Olympics is more than just the sum of its parts—despite my contribution today, I know that. It is also more than the buildings. The motivation that fuels those of us who, despite these problems, very much support the games in London, is the potentially transforming nature of those games for communities. The hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) rightly mentioned the record levels of volunteering, the interest and investment in sporting clubs and coaching infrastructure. That shows that the games are not just about the physical side, but about the development and evolution of new and existing communities in a sustainable manner, which requires long-term planning, and, I believe, immediate action.

Harry Cohen: My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, raising many pertinent points. She started out by talking about poverty in the east end, but poverty—and child poverty, in particular—is not just about money and housing, but about poverty of experience. One proposal put to me—and, I suspect, to my hon. Friend and other east London MPs—came from the Field Studies Council. It proposed having an outdoor learning centre that could bring children in from areas across London and throughout the country so that they could benefit from nature studies and associated activities. Would my hon. Friend support that proposal for post-2012?

Lyn Brown: I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution, and I support that proposal. Being a local girl who grew up in Newham, I recall benefiting from a field study trip to a little place called Maldon in Essex. It was my very first time away from home, at the age of 10, and I can say that it was a life-changing experience. I have not often been back to Essex since, but perhaps I should.

It seems to me that the current Olympic budget is modest for an event that would help to improve the life chances of the poorest Londoners—the 40 per cent. of London’s children who live in poverty. It is modest in view of the relief it could bring to thousands of families living in temporary accommodation, modest in that it could upskill millions of citizens in London and its neighbours, creating prosperity for communities, modest for improving the health of a community of people who die earlier than their neighbours, and modest for re-energising the nation in 2012, boosting young people’s interest in sport and reminding the globe’s travellers of what an amazing place London is to visit.

The Government and the Olympic Delivery Authority have worked tirelessly to ensure that the budget is managed and remains at a sustainable level. The Government are right to be mindful of the need for responsible spending, particularly at a time of financial difficulty. With the UK suffering the effects of the global economic downturn, it is clear that the budget may have to be reviewed, along with the precise design and make-up of the Olympic park and venues. But this review has to be balanced.

To host the second London austerity games, as some are already suggesting, would betray not only the ethos and vision of the Singapore bid, but the vision and the hope that is based on the opportunity to regenerate east London and its surrounding areas. By correctly implementing the regeneration ethos of the Singapore bid, east London can be changed from an area of relatively poor health and high unemployment to a community based on skills, aspiration and healthy activity. The Government have worked hard towards achieving that goal to date, but I would urge them to redouble their efforts and approach the current funding difficulties with the same vigour and determination as my constituent, Christine Ohuruogu, at the finish line in Beijing.

My constituents, who continue to endure the disruption that the seven-day-a-week construction inevitably causes and who have seen local residents and businesses forced to relocate, not only deserve legacy commitments in exchange for that disruption and for their enthusiastic support for the project, but need them to be delivered to allow them to break free of the deprivation that holds back the dreams of so many. They should be allowed the new housing, new sports facilities, cleaner and greener environment and the wider increased job opportunities that the legacy has the potential to offer.

I end my contribution—I do not often do this—by quoting a passage from one of my own speeches made a couple of weeks after the Olympic bid was won. I said that if the Olympic games failed to benefit—benefit, not displace—the people I have just spoken about, the games would have been a failed opportunity and a failed investment. I believe that that statement has stood the test of time