Tuesday 21st February 2012 | 12:39

Barry Gardiner: Relationship between IOA and national Olympic associations needs radical reform

Labour MP Barry Gardiner calls for the relationship between national Olympic Associations, the International Olympic Association and host governments to be reformed.

I am a huge fan of the Olympic Games. My father represented Great Britain the last time we fielded a football team at the Olympics. I was a founding member of the All Party Group which first pushed for us to host the 2012 Olympics, and as a London MP I share the excitement of Londoners at the honour of hosting such a celebrated event. It is because I am such a fan, that I am so worried about the involvement of the Dow Chemical Company in the London Olympics, and am campaigning for their removal from the games.

The London Games have rightly been hailed as the most sustainable ever. Lord Coe and his team have gone to great lengths to ensure suppliers and contractors reach the highest levels of sustainability and he should be saluted for his success. However, there is one issue which has repeatedly undermined the London Games reputation for sustainability. It is an issue about which the government, LOCOG and the International Olympic Committee have been repeatedly warned, and on which all three have completely failed to act. That issue is the involvement in the London Games of the Dow Chemical Company as a TOP Sponsor. Any person examining the procurement process with an independent business mind really would be hard pressed to give it a clean bill of health.

Dow Chemicals are reputed to have paid up to $75m to become a partner of the International Olympic Committee. It is understandable then that they might have felt aggrieved that they did not have a prominent role in the London Games. But the way in which many feel they were shoe-horned into the games to become a sponsor for the Stadium Wrap at a supposed value of £7m, only demonstrates the need for increased transparency in the Olympic movement as a whole, and the need for radical reform in the relationship between national Olympic Associations, the International Olympic Association and host Governments.

The Dow Chemical Company are a company who have a history of business malpractice that has been well publicised. A notorious example of this is their refusal to clean up the site of the 1984 Bhopal Gas disaster, the worlds worst ever industrial accident, despite becoming the owner of Union Carbide Corporation who operated the Indian plant at the time. Proper compensation was never made to the victims and their families, who received only $600 per victim. Twenty Five thousand people are said to have died as a result of the tragedy and many still suffer blindness and other debilitating illnesses to this day.

One of the Games 12 Sustainability Commissioners has resigned over what she believes was an attempt to whitewash Dow and provide them with a sponsorship platform that was inappropriate given their record on sustainability. The Indian Olympic Authority, Athletes, and the Bhopal Survivers have all asked LOCOG to dump Dow as a Sponsor of the London Games. Ministers should now urgently review whether the reputational damage to the London Games is worth the value of a recyclable stadium decoration.