Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for letting me be here to talk a little about the Olympic Games.
I thought I'd start with a quick overview and then have a brief word about the Olympics and the Paralympics. Needless to say, this is an exciting year for us. We have not just the diamond jubilee, but of course we also have the enormous games of 2012. We're very proud to be hosting them: London is the only city to have hosted the Olympic Games three times.
The good news is that the preparations are in great shape. We're on time. Indeed, all the major venues were completed about a year ago to allow for extensive testing, and that's ongoing as we speak. To remind you of the dates, the Olympic opening ceremony will be on July 27, and the Paralympics start on August 29.
Amazingly, we're on budget. The total public sector funding for the Olympic Games is £9.3 billion, and this covers all the additional security, defence, and public transport provisions. Obviously, we see it very much as an investment in Britain's future in sport, but also in a whole range of other things, including infrastructure, transport, communication, employment and, indeed, the economy as a whole.
Olympic Park—and I hope some of you will get a chance to see it in the flesh—is a showcase of British design, construction, and environmental concern. We've used building methods throughout the whole process that have reduced carbon footprints, majored on recycling, and have contributed, we think, to a very green games.
No presentation would be complete without a few random statistics. Here they are: we're expecting a global audience of about four billion—a fair percentage of the planet. There will be 14,000 Olympic athletes and 4,000 Paralympic athletes. We're expecting 120 heads of state and government to attend the opening ceremony. By contrast, there were 89 in Beijing—and so we've seen a quantum increase. Moreover, 25,000 journalists will beam this to you blow by blow, and we're expecting about 330,000 extra visitors in the U.K. over the period of the games.
Let me talk briefly about the Olympics themselves. We have 57 days and counting to the start of what is to be the 30th Olympiad, so the marathon is over and we're in the final sprint, if you'll allow a slightly corny pun. The Olympic torch is in Britain, and is being run around the entire country, including the island of Ireland. It'll pass within about an hour of 95% of the whole population.
Olympic Park itself is one of the jewels of the whole process. It has transformed a site in east London that was derelict as the consequence of war, neglect, and industrial pollution, and it's turned it into the largest urban park in Europe. It's got a whole new ecology of wildlife, woodlands, wetlands, and waterways. It's intended to be not just a powerful environmental statement, but also a powerful environmental legacy.
Obviously sport is at its centre, but if there is a broader theme for these games, it is legacy, and legacy in terms of sustainability. It's in the DNA of the project. The whole place was designed to be light in terms of its footprint; the Olympic stadium, for what it's worth, is the lightest ever built, at a mere 10,000 tonnes of steel by comparison to some real behemoths in the past. It's not intended to be just architecturally stunning, but it's intended for future use, which has been a key consideration. We don't want white elephants in London, and six of the eight major Olympic venues are already contracted for use beyond 2012. For example, the Olympic stadium itself, after the games, will become first a premiership football ground, and then it will host the world athletic championships in 2017.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's a vision for the park for the next 20 years. We want it to be a new place to work, live, and play. It will have beautiful open spaces. It will have iconic architecture, and more important than that, it will have links to the rest of London, Britain, and of course Europe, because the games are about more than just either sport or, indeed, London. They are about the revitalization, in part, of the five poorest boroughs of east London, and we've seen substantial corporate investment already taking place.
A new area of east London called Tech City is a fast-growing cluster of small digital start-up companies, which is extending into the east end. We have a green enterprise district that is attracting sustainable technology start-ups. We already have the largest shopping centre in Europe very close to the games, with 10,000 permanent jobs resulting and a million shoppers showing up in the first week. There must be a recession somewhere, but I'm not sure it's in east London at the moment.
Central to all this is the transport infrastructure. We have turned what was the least well connected part of London into one of the best, with light railway, underground bus transport, and a whole range of other things. That is all virtually ready to go.
Let me talk briefly about what will be the 14th Paralympiad. We're determined to make this the most accessible games ever. Indeed, London 2012 is the first games in which both the planning and the organization of the Olympics and Paralympics have been fully integrated. Disability access is incorporated into everything—all the venues, all the open spaces, and all the public transport. Why, you might ask? There are three reasons.
The first reason is that the paralympic movement started in London. It started in 1948. London will have hosted the games three times, as I said, in 1908, 1948, and this year. In 1948, at a hospital called Stoke Mandeville just outside London, which was full of disabled World War II veterans, there was an archery contest in parallel with the 1948 games. From that very small beginning came the idea of disabled athletes taking part in the greatest games in the world. By 1960 they were a more formal part, and by 1984 they were fully integrated into the Olympic Games. We're very proud in London that the Paralympics are effectively coming home.
The second reason is disabled people themselves. There's a strong ambition that the games should change the way, as best we can, people look at disability and encourage the idea that disabled people should be allowed to lead more independent lives.
The third reason, of course, is that we want to encourage more disabled people to take part in sport. I've had the very great privilege of meeting a number of Canada's paralympic athletes in swimming, wheelchair basketball—your captain has already won medals in a number of games and seems determined to take the gold off us again—and wheelchair rugby. I can only ask you to imagine what wheelchair rugby must be like. There is an extraordinary level of fitness, confidence, and commitment involved. London is very pleased to have all of this.
I'll just end by saying that we're delighted and looking forward to welcoming Canada's athletes and, of course, the world's. It's very close. We're excited, but we're not complacent. There is still the question of delivering a safe and secure games that's also a friendly and accessible one, but we're on the case.
Thank you very much for listening, and I'd be happy in due course to take any questions.