London 2012 Olympics not exempt from budget cuts 14/05/2010 |
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Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has revealed that the 2012 Olympic Games will not be protected from budget cuts under the new Government.
Hunt, whose brief includes London 2012, said if the required cuts were spread evenly between all government departments, his would have to find £66m of savings.
"Olympic money is not protected,” he told BBC’s Newsnight. "None of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's budgets are protected.
"We are looking at all of them [Department for Culture, Media and Sport budgets] and saying, can we save this money without affecting core services?"
However, Labour's former Olympic minister Tessa Jowell warned that the new Government should be "very careful about destabilising the Olympic budget”.
She said: "The Olympic budget has a substantial contingency, which has enabled the project so far to be delivered on budget and on time.
"Reducing the available contingency could well lead to short-term savings, but greater costs in the long term.''
Conservative mayor of London Boris Johnson insisted Londoners would not have to pay more as a result of these savings.
"That would be a mistake – I am very, very confident that won't happen,” he told the BBC.
"We have already made considerable savings. We had a big discussion about how to move venues around so we didn't build a ludicrous new badminton superdome and we sent it to Wembley Arena where there is already a perfectly fantastic venue.
"And more importantly, the Olympic Delivery Authority has done an amazing job bringing this in on time and on budget, and we think there will be substantial savings by the time the project is complete.
"Time is money and if you can do things early you can save money. In a budget of £9.325bn, there is going to be room for manoeuvre."
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