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London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

I will take advantage of the kindness of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in responding on the amendments that I moved before she winds up on the group as a whole. I am very familiar with the reluctance of government draftsmen and Ministers to include long lists. I tell the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, that I have taken his name in vain prior to his arrival in the room. He could not have timed his arrival better. The draftsmen and Ministers are not enthusiastic about lists, because once you have started lists people can put down amendments adding to them. In the Bill that created the Greater London Authority, I warned Mr Raynsford, the then Minister in charge of the Bill, that in speaking about the Mayor having regard to the care of archives, I had both a short speech and a long speech. I was going to make the short speech first, but if he showed no enthusiasm at all for my suggestions, I would make the long speech in winding up. I did make the long speech, because he had rejected my idea for the list curtailment reason, but I am delighted to say that, perhaps in a modest way as a result of the very long speech that I made in Committee in the Commons, the archives were added to the list in the House of Lords, and the story ended happily. I assure the Minister that I am not going to do the same thing today. I took the point when the noble Baroness made it about ““environmental”” being exclusive; I was not intending it to be exclusive. It might be described as not so much a proving amendment as an exhortatory one, and it certainly managed to raise the subject and has enabled us to discuss it. The green-ness is in the bid; the Government’s justification for part of the Bill is to fulfil their contract to the Olympic authorities, and we will be coming on to aspects of that later in the Bill. The Minister made perfectly admirable reference to detail and to the things to which the Government are committed in the bid. It is helpful to have those on the record again beyond the references that we had to them at Second Reading. At the end of the day, the Government can satisfy the Olympic authorities that they have delivered what they said they would in the bid without necessarily securing the optimal environmental return that might have been achieved in other circumstances. Therefore, we shall be keeping a beady eye on this subject, but I shall not move my amendment in due course.