MPs slam Sport England over Wembley

11 Jul 02
MPs have branded Sport England's handling of the Wembley national stadium fiasco as 'slack, slovenly and supine'.

12 July 2002

Sport England failed to demand and enforce high standards of conduct, transparency and accountability when it handed more than £120m of lottery money to Wembley National Stadium Limited. 'We believe that Sport England's performance has been deficient to the point of dereliction,' they said.

The Commons' culture, media and sport select committee demanded that future lottery bodies learn important lessons and assign officers to monitor how grants are used.

In a report published this week, Wembley National Stadium Project: into injury time, the MPs allege that the sports lottery funding body failed to monitor closely enough WNSL's use of the grant.

It claims that procurement decisions were reported by WNSL as 'faits accomplis' and added: 'The lottery grant was handed over prematurely and spent on the purchase of the site and the stadium design. WNSL seemed to behave as if this was the end of the public interest in the project.'

Committee chair Gerald Kaufman told Public Finance: 'Monitoring of the use of such money is extremely important and that's why we believe that there should be designated officers in the lottery funding organisations to look after this.

'There's huge competition for lottery money. Those who don't get it should be able to see that those who do have used it in a way which they would regard as fair.'

Kaufman was adamant that central government should not be tied to commercial projects such as Wembley.

PFjul2002

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