ABSTRACT
On 15 March 2007 Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, stood up in the British House of Commons to deliver a statement about the costs of the 2012 London Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. The readily apparent strain on her face suggested that this was not an occasion that she had been anticipating with much pleasure. As shown in the previous chapter (see table 17.1), the Olympic bid document outlined a £2.375 billion capital budget and £1.5 billion operating budget, which would be supplemented by the additional fi nancing of transport and site infrastructure. The subsequent steady drip of information, undoubtedly stage managed to prepare the way for an eventual (and accurate) reckoning, had revealed the various items not previously included in the costings. Policing and security, conspicuously absent from the original costings now weighed in at £600 million. Value-added tax, somehow omitted from earlier calculations, was estimated as £836 million. A hefty programme contingency cost of £2.747 billion had appeared at the Treasury’s bidding to cover cost overruns. The headline fi gure was now £9.325 billion.2
