Livingstone Slams ‘excessive’ 2012 Budget

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has reignited the row over the London 2012
Olympics budget by claiming that the new revised £9.35bn costs are ‘completely
excessive’.

With demolition work on the main Olympic site due to begin this weekend
marking five years to the start of the 2012 Games, Livingstone slammed the costs
and said that they should still be reduced.

Commented Livingstone: ‘It is completely excessive. I’ll consider it a
personal defeat if we do not knock several billion off.’

The budget for the 2012 Games had originally been set at £2.4bn in the
initial bid document but has since been constantly revised until the £9.3bn
figure was laid out earlier this year by then Culture Secretary and now Olympics
Minister Tessa Jowell.

The new figure includes a £2.7bn contingency amount amongst other new costs
but Livingstone insists it can still be reduced.

‘We’ve now got a budget set for £5.5bn. Inevitably, things will crop up and
it will almost end up at £6bn. I’d be quite proud if we kept it at that. If it
starts going over £7bn that will be a defeat.

‘Prime Minister Gordon Brown has built in this huge contingency for just
about everything that could go wrong. Our job is to keep that to the minimum of
things that could go wrong.’