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London 2012 Games Security

Volume 558: debated on Tuesday 12 February 2013

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) and G4S have today announced that they have reached a settlement following G4S’s failure to deliver in full the Olympic and Paralympic venue security contract.

LOCOG’s negotiating parameters were set out before the Home Affairs Committee in September by my Noble Friend, Lord Deighton, then LOCOG chief executive:

The public purse should not be adversely impacted by G4S’s failure to deliver on its contractual obligation;

The step in costs of using the military and police in place of G4S should be met by G4S;

LOCOG will not pay for any services not delivered.

All these objectives have been achieved.

The settlement, which has full Government approval, imposes a total reduction of £85 million in the payment due to G4S. This is to meet the step-in costs and to reflect their very serious failure to deliver. The settlement also recognises that G4S did provide around 80% of its contracted workforce hours over the course of the pre-games, games-time and post-games periods.

The Government contribution to the LOCOG venue security budget was set at £553 million in December 2011. The settlement today brings the total savings on that budget to £102 million, £39 million of which was announced in October 2012.

DCMS will provide a further update on the overall public sector funding package position (including venue security) at the end of June 2013.