Culture Secretary rumoured to cut funding for the Paralympic Games

Labour Party

Are there no depths to which the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will not sink?

Hard on the heels of his decision to abolish the UK Film Council, rumours abound that Jeremy Hunt will cut funding to the Paralympic Games.  Surely this is the cruellest cut of all, and totally unjustified.

The Evening Standard Londoners’ Diary picked up on the story and quoted me: 

Golden girl joins the 2012 cuts debate

Rumours of impending cuts to the Paralympic Games in 2012 have not gone down well with Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington, pictured. “London getting the Olympics and Paralympics is such a huge thing that it’d be a shame if they had to cut back,” she told me at the premiere last night of Salt. Nor is London MEP Mary Honeyball happy. “If these rumours are true, and the Department for Culture Media and Sport have not denied them, I suspect the minister will find it hard to justify this move,” she says. “I’m sure Jeremy Hunt will face a backlash if this is announced. But the Culture Secretary fails to see the benefit [of the Olympic legacy], having himself reportedly said, ‘We’ve always had real concerns about the lack of a legacy for the whole country’.”