2012 Games budget soars, according to report 09/11/2009 |
|
| |
| |
The London 2012 Olympics will cost the British public at least £12bn – £2.7bn more than originally promised, it has been claimed.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the £9.325bn limit put on public spending by the Government vastly underestimates the true cost of staging the Games.
Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell told Parliament last year: “I have made it absolutely clear to all the many stakeholders in the Olympics that £9.325bn is the absolute limit of public money, whether it comes from the lottery, the London council taxpayer or the Exchequer.”
But the newspaper claims that an extra £2.7bn has been hidden, not publicly announced or “buried in obscure documents or reports”. That figure is said to include £1.15bn spent by the London Development Agency to buy and clean up the Olympic site and £389m for Games-specific” transport improvements by Transport for London and Network Rail.
Those costs are not part of the £9.325bn figure and Shadow Olympics Minister Hugh Robertson said: “When [ministers] talk about the Olympic budget, it is an extraordinarily misleading term. There is really a number of different budgets that go far beyond the amount quoted.”
Robertson estimates that the true cost of the Games is likely to be substantially higher than even the £12bn figure.
However, a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport added: “We were always clear that there would be additional spending by other public bodies in addition to the main £9.3bn allocation.”
|
| Back |
| |
| |
|
|
 |
Advertisement
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
