03/08/2016 Newsnight

The Games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded

Our principle is to deliver a lasting, sporting legacy.

Our Olympics will give the East End of London the huge regenerative

It's a job creator, it's a growth generator.

Our aim is to inspire young people across Britain

and the world to take up sport.

The stadium will be a purpose-built home for athletics

I would say the legacy is a success on every level.

Two days to go until the Rio Olympics opens.

This time four years ago, the excitement and the trepidation and

the Yanks at that things would go well. It did. Was the economics

worth it and why are fewer cities coming forward to offer to host. We

will hear from Dame Kelly Holmes, Dame Tessa Jarrell when we ask if

London 2012 succeeded in inspiring a new generation into sport.

Inspire a generation became an mantra of the London 2012 Olympics.

Go back to 2005 and the promise lake at the heart of London's pitch to

host The Games. And it worked. With London overhauling its main rival,

Paris in the final vote. The 2012 organisers and the Coalition

Government made two specific promises. The first centred on

harnessing Britain's passion for sport to increase grassroots

participation and to encourage the whole population to be more

physically active. The other focused on promoting community engagement

and achieving participation across all groups in society through The

Games. Has the legacy been achieved? Keep your hand up higher. In 2011 in

Tower Hamlets, surrounded by Olympic venues, there was a sense of

optimism. In terms of Olympic legacy, it is here, we are

delivering it. In terms of the promises about youth and

participation, we are here doing it. That was christened Willits speaking

a year before London hosted The Games. Five years on, I went back to

ask him if the legacy had lived on. We had everything in place to be

able to deliver probably the best legacy there had been to any Olympic

Games ever. But since pretty much when the Olympics came into town,

we've just been fighting for survival. That sense of lost

opportunity is rooted in the scrapping of the school sports

partnership. ?162 million of annual government funding, which was

withdrawn shortly before The Games began. It has been partially

replaced, but critics point to the inconsistencies in house School

sport is now provided. In Tower Hamlets, there is pride access to

sport that the children is continuing and achieving tangible

success, despite the cuts. What is it about sport you like? I adore it,

it is my favourite thing in my life. I do sport a lot and this is the

best sports I have ever done. When you watched some of the Olympics on

TV, did it make you think you could definitely do that? Yes. When Tom

Daley did the dive and he landed on his back. That's not a recollection

Tom Daley would share, having won a bronze medal. These kids are

enjoying their school summer sports, but it is this kind of activity that

convinced the IOC in 2005 to give London the 2012 games. They were

convinced by the organisers' claims of creating a fitter, healthier

nation. But when you look back to when the bid was one, and then to

2012 when The Games took place. 15.8 million adults play sport or

exercise once a week. An extra 1.7 million to 2005. Since 2012, the

numbers have fallen by just under half of 1%. The biggest decline

among ethnic minorities and economically deprived groups. The

overall Olympic budget was ?9.3 billion. The huge proportion going

towards regenerating a large area of east London. Money was diverted

towards building a sporting legacy however, with 100 35mm pounds of

lottery funding spent on facilities, protecting playing fields and

volunteering programmes and extending access to Olympic sports.

Our ambition was sky-high, and so it should have been. The recession did

have an effect, but if you look at the picture across the piece, you

can't do anything but agree that the London Olympics was a huge success

for sport in this country. It transformed our reputation

internationally. The point of this was the future generations and it

was going to cost a lot of money, no doubt about that. It was going to be

quite disruptive in many ways. But the point was it would improve us as

a country. It provided a very nice summer party, and that is it. A ?9

billion party? At least. Persuading adults to take up sport is a

continuing process. Sport England's campaign has one post-Olympic

effort, said to have convinced around 1.6 million women to start

exercising. The lead sport is yielding significant results, Team

GB helps to win 48 medals at the Rio games. With 64% of over 16 is doing

no sport or exercise, it seems changing mindsets and delivering

London's promise for all, is still a long way off. But, there is always

hope. What do you watch and think, I can definitely do that? Going round

the track. I saw the great British runners running round and I thought,

I can definitely do that. Let's talk to Dame Tessa Jowell,

Dame Kelly Holmes and Debbie Jevans, Dame Kelly, this tag line was about

inspiring a new generation, did it do that? Is it too early to look

back and see if it has been achieved? I have always come to the

assumption that legacy is a long-term effect. Having been

interactive with lots of people in my years and especially in previous

years, I have seen a big impact over that time. I am somebody now who

isn't in elite sport, but wants to keep fit and active and I am trying

to engage with communities to do that. So the mass participation

events I have seen improve and get more people into sport, have been

something I have seen as an ongoing effect of what legacy is. So the

visibility is there of these high impact events, but what is your

sense, Tessa Jowell, we had from Hugh Robertson who said it is

impossible to disagree it was a huge success for sport in this country,

do you share that? I do in part. 19 major World Championships between

now and 2020 will be hosted in London. What we failed to do, what

the Coalition Government did, was to destroy the school sports programme

that was on course to seeing the majority of children playing at

least five hours of sport every week. Choosing from 14 different

sports, renewed facilities and proper coaching. So, we started in

2002, 20 5% of children playing two hours of sport a week. By the time

we got to 2010 and the change of government, 60% of children were

playing five hours or more and 98% of children were playing at least

two hours of sport. And that was the infrastructure to drive this

transformation of a generation through sport and the Coalition

Government dismantled it. When you look at the numbers, as sports

director of London 2012, we have plateaued and even fallen as a

nation and participation in sport, it is

incredible, isn't it? It is incredible, but it is good. If you

look at Athens, and what has happened in Sydney, the fact we have

maintained the levels we had in 2012 is a positive thing. Is that right,

no city in specs to increase their participation and our benchmark is

Athens? Our benchmark is 14 million. That is when the change of

investment started and Tessa was a part of that as well. We are up to

maintaining the levels we had in 2012. Tessa makes the point of what

happened in schools. That is vital we do continue to invest in those

and that is what is happening in line to the school games, which is

another thing that is important. If you dedicate the money, it is not

spent on sport, so you have to ring fenced it in schools and beyond. I

was a national school sport champion for three years 2005 to 2008 and I

saw how schools were empowering young people into sport. But with

2012, what happened for me, was the enormity of what school brought. The

set of it just being athletics, football and those high profile

sports, what happened from 2012 is it encourage people to see that

sport is for anybody. What you have seen the likes of handball, an

unknown sport has been rising out of the water because of 2012. Cycling,

as a sports. If you look back at 2008, it wasn't really well-known,

now you get a three days festival, which I have just done, ride London.

Shouldn't it worry you we are seeing a decline in economically deprived

groups, ethnic minority groups? It is also part of the legacy? I agree

with that, and there are barriers to entry in some communities. My trust

works with a lot of areas of depravation and they want to do it,

but they haven't got the resources or the funding. In some areas they

don't have the infrastructure. London is very lucky and privileged

as a city. We see other cities hosting big games, very privileged.

You go to other areas and they are not feeling it. Was the ambition too

high? It was sky-high, maybe RIBA unrealistic? The ambition was not

too high. Until 2010 everybody showed working together across

party, the ambition was achievable. Would it have been different under a

Labour government? I think it would have been different had the

Coalition Government been misguided. I don't want to make this too

partisan, had they not been so misguided and said, we will remove

the ring fence, the dedicated funding that goes into schools. I

accept the work being done at sport England, which I clearly believe is

excellent and we will not get into a debate. I was delivering The Games

when it was happening. But ?9,000 was going into every primary school,

there is still funding. What is important, if we look to an active

nation, which is what the ambition is now, it is also the way that

sport is being coached in schools. Kelly, you are a talented athlete,

you enjoyed it. A lot of children are put off. It is not just about

the money, it is about the way it is coached. It is an emphasis of the

child thinks that I can do it. It is a big part of what is being rolled

out now. We are going to talk about the money next.

A newly-reinvigorated sporting nation was not the only

There was also the promise of an East London renaissance.

The facilities, the housing, the regeneration.

The Olympic Park itself is well used and well liked -

Nor is it Montreal, the byword for post-Olympic financial disaster.

But a lot of the long-term plans for the area - West Ham moving

into the Olympic Stadium or UCL opening a new site in East London,

Chris Cook has been piecing together what we can say right now

about London 2012's long-term economic legacy.

7,000 pigeons circle the stadium before carrying the news

The Olympics can be a very expensive enterprise.

The Russian Sochi Winter Games in 2014, according

to official estimates, cost 51 billion US dollars.

The Beijing Summer Games in 2008, cost around 40 billion US dollars.

Compared to them, the cost of the London 2012 Games

The building of new offices and a higher education

campus in Stratford, for example, are still not complete.

One argument for the economic benefits of the Olympics

is they give political cover to do things that people

The Barcelona Games in 1992 were considered successful,

but they were used as a pretext to implant parts of an urban

redevelopment plan first drawn up in 1976.

In London's case though, we built some useful

things, like housing, but the Olympics where

things, like housing, but the Olympics were

the aim of much of our investment, not a pretext.

That might help explain why earnings are not improving fast

enough in the Olympic area to catch up with the rest of London.

Nor the employment rate, nor adult skill levels,

Barcelona had another economic advantage -

after years of being forgotten under Franco, Barcelona was a relatively

There were only 3.8 million tourist nights spent there in 1990.

20 years later, that stood at 15 million,

But by then, London was already a world city with 49 million tourist

Olympic marketing offered smaller opportunities to London than it

Indeed, the difficulty of emulating Barcelona may explain why a lot

of cities are now sceptical about hosting the Games.

Athens 2004 beat off 11 other applicant cities.

Tokyo is holding the 2020 Games and it beat just four other cities.

The London Olympics led to a lot of development and real

regeneration takes time, but maybe it's best to remember it

as a ?9 billion party, and anything else we get is a bonus.

Lets pick up again with Tessa Jowell,

What is emerging from that graphic is that there is less global

appetite now to actually host these events. Does that shock you? In a

way, no it doesn't. Because I think the economics have changed in the

world generally and it is very expensive. The IOC recognised that,

why they have their 2020 vision. The IOC didn't focus on the future until

post-2012 and now it makes the city think about the legacy and the

benefits. But it's enormously expensive and I think it's going to

need a rethink. I'm not sure in 20 or 30 years' time we will see the

Games in just one city, it could be in a whole country. We have set a

bar at ?9 billion which seems hugely unrealistic for anywhere smaller?

That is absolutely right. At domestic Lee what the investment of

?9.3 billion did it was to regenerate east London in six years

at a rate that would have otherwise taken 60 years. That regeneration is

still happening. But Debbie is absolutely right, you've got to be

very clear and ruthless about your legacy ambitions before ever

embarking on it. And we were absolutely clear that we had two

legacy ambitions, to regenerate east London, which was a wasteland, and

to transform a generation of young people through sport. Kelly is

absolutely right in what she said at the beginning coming you've got to

look at this over the long-term. I hope we can come back in ten years'

time and look at what's happening in these London. Demi just bring in

Cali. You are famed throughout the world feel sport but do you ever get

people here at home saying to you, we spent ?269 million on an Aquatics

Centre, its one swimming pool, how many kids can use that? Like I say,

I came on here and I was nervous about coming on the show, I have an

opinion about this because I do my thing and I am sporty but other

people on my Twitter for example have a completely different opinion.

I was very surprised that there were a lot of really positive responses.

I asked the question I was on Newsnight, talking about legacy,

what do you think? I was release apprised, I -- really surprised, I

saw a lot -- hike spec today lot of negative talk, people saying, you

spent tenderly hands, what did it for me? But I had a lot of positive

responses, some saying their children are so motivated and want

to be into sport. Others saying World Championship events are now

hosted in the UK and they get to go, others love the Olympic. For east

London we are creating a low busy and that is long-term. Are we doing

nationally? Not sure. Why are places like Toronto and Hamburg having to

ask through referendums whether there cities want to host the Games?

The world has changed, we just had our own referendum, and the economic

situation is very difficult. People are looking at that and maybe if we

asked about hosting the Games now we would not have had the same

response. I think there is a growing rebellion against what people

experience as the kind of imposition of big events like this. I think

there is a challenge for the International Olympic Committee in

really calibrating the ownership with the cities and the countries

that decide to host them. Probably to become less prescriptive, to be

less proprietorial about the Olympic brand. And I think very particularly

to decide whether the Olympic Games is going to continue to be a global

Games. When will we see an Olympic Games in Africa? Post-Rio, I think

we're going to have a lot of questions asked about how it has

affected the people who live there. Thank you very much indeed, all of

you. The London 2012 Opening Ceremony

portrayed a Britain of the NHS, of the Industrial Revolution,

of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, of Prospero, of Suffragettes,

immigrants and Chelsea Pensioners, of James Bond, of Corgis,

of the Queen and Mr Bean. It was broadly hailed as a triumph,

chaotic, bonkers, but brilliant, a stark contrast to an equally

commended but highly-regimented one So, does the Opening Ceremony tell

us anything about our country? Peter Hitchens and Sunder

Katwala have joined me. Let me throw that one open to both

of you. What did it tell us about the country and what did it say to

you? I love it. The world was watching, we had the Queen with

James Bond and Mr Bean and that were recognisable but it was a story

about us, us, full of in jokes about our national psyche and

conversation, the shipping forecast, the EastEnders theme tune. It's

about things we experience together, things we share, the shared

soundtrack of our lives. The fact that 27 million of us were watching

that night is quite rare in society today, doing something together on

that scale. Peter Hitchens. I just don't think that everyone at the

country thought at the time or things now that the 1960s were the

beginning of civilisation, that rap music was the best representation of

British culture... Certainly myself, I didn't find it particularly

appealing. I felt very much under pressure to say that I liked it and

when I said that I didn't, people could say we disagree -- people

didn't say we disagree with you, let's talk about this, they said it

was shocking that I didn't like it. I agree there was a monoculture at

the time, wasn't there? Why do you go back to the 1960s? The opening

ceremony went back to the industrial revolution and Shakespeare. It was

dominated hugely by the 60s theme, by rock music and punk and all this

garbage as far as I'm concerned which has no bearing on culture at

all and this is what they were clearly happiest with and what

dominated. The suffragettes? Well, the suffragettes were in their too.

Paul Flynn, who I like immensely who is a very good left-wing member of

Parliament enjoy it immensely because it was left wing. I'm not

left wing and I disliked the bits of it that were left wing. I'm not so

sure about that because in a way because it had a leftward reach and

a liberal reach for something that was patriotically at the history and

the roots were their too. I think you try to blend that. Cultural

voices were on stand-by to defend it and there was no biddy to defend it

against. Apart from anybody else, nobody can criticise the Olympics

for being multicultural while using language like that... It's a much

broader ownership than that. The clue is the 27 million people. If

you're one of the people in London who voted Remain and are very upset

about the referendum, it you would be thinking what have we lost, I

want my country back. If you are a Leave voter in the potteries, you

will beat thinking that explains the reason I voted leave, the Jarrow

marchers, the Industrial Revolution... People who disagree

politically shared these cultural moments. Unjustified confidence. The

Olympics are like a family on your street known for being heavily in

debt who can't make their mortgage payments who suddenly borrow

hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage an enormous party. That is

what we did. This is a country hugely in debt as a step and as a

people and we splashed 9 billion quid on this immense party, which we

didn't need to stage and we actually fought to stage. Austerity should

have been a gigantic plughole with George Osborne shovelling ?50 notes

in. This reminded people of everything we've achieved, the

Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, Dickens, Harry pot, the Queen. It

gave us that, if you like, nation state confidence. We've soared

onwards and upwards ever since, of course (!) What does that mean? What

about Brexit's effect of the economy? It had no effect except

increasing our overdraft. It doesn't feature in the ground sweep after

Sergeant Pepper, you don't have Heath and Wilson taking us into

Europe. That process of change wasn't on the ballot paper in this

election, it wasn't do you want to live in 1962 or 2016? It was asking

do you like living in 2016 and 52% of the population said not really,

not very much. They still own that historic sweep which belongs to both

sides of the referendum. They said we don't like being ignored by the

kind of people who devise our opening ceremony. This is a bit too

short and I apologise, thank you very much indeed for coming in.

The father of a 21-year-old woman imprisoned in Saudi Arabia

has been ordered by a high court judge to return her to the UK.

Amina Al Jeffery, who grew up in Swansea and has dual British

and Saudi nationality, complained that her father had kept her locked

up in a cage because he disapproved of her Western lifestyle.

Her father claims he was trying to protect her.

Secunder Kermani has interviewed Amina's friend, who first raised

the alarm of her imprisonment, and has spoken to a charity who say

Imprisoned in her father's home for four years in Saudi Arabia without

being allowed to leave. 21-year-old Amina Al Jeffery

believes her family once heard dead. She was taken to Jeddah by her

ultraconservative parents who claimed she was taking drugs and

drinking. Through lawyers, she has been fighting to be able to return

to the UK. In court today, the judge said that the constraints placed on

Amina Al Jeffery by her father might be acceptable in Saudi Arabia but

they are not in Britain. He said she was being deprived of her right to

act as an independent adult and that she needed to be rescued. The judge

ruled that Amina's father must allow her to return to Britain by Sunday

the 11th of September. The question is whether her father, living in

Saudi Arabia, will pay any attention to the rulings of a court the UK.

Amina's lawyer has not been able to talk to her because of her father. I

would love to speak to Amina today to explain to her what the judge

said and how concerned he is for her well-being, that he considers her to

be under constraint and he used the word peril. Amina grew up here in

this quiet, mainly white Swansea a bird. We've spoken to a number of

her friends who extra I'm her -- who described her family as being

extremely socially conservative. Amina didn't fit into that, we have

been told that unlike her sisters she would take off her hijab at

times. She wanted to have a normal life but that brought her into

conflict with her father. She would take clothes to change into at

school. She didn't want to be dressing in skimpy clothes, she just

wanted to be dressed how she wanted to be dressed. Colourful blazers and

nice shoes and jewellery. She would stick jewellery on hand statement

necklaces. -- and statement necklaces. One charities say they

warned the police in 2011 that Amina was at risk of being taken to Saudi

Arabia by her family but nothing was done. The police say they received

no such warning and only got involved in April 2012 after Amina

had disappeared. I had a message saying she was going on holiday to

Morocco for two weeks. I didn't hear from her until three months later,

telling me she had been taken to Saudi Arabia. What did you say in

her messages to you? She just said I've been taken against my will, I

don't want to be here, you need to help me. She just didn't want to be

there. She said it was like prison, she couldn't get out. She wanted to

get on with her life. She wanted to get home, it wasn't where she

belonged. Her friend read out one of the many worrying messages she

received. "I'm Writing this story in case worse comes to worst people

know what happened. You don't know what I've been through the last

week. I have to tell you but I don't have time". Amina's mother and some

of her siblings Silicon Wales. We've spoken to members of the family who

say their brothers controlled their sister's actions. At the moment she

doesn't have any support from her siblings and her siblings have filed

evidence in support of her father's case. Amina is a jewel Saudi and

British national and that could come to eight things. The Foreign Office

say they are raising the matter with Saudi authorities but if her father

does not comply, it's not clear what the courts here can do.