Culture Secretary defends the grassroots legacy of 2012

As he and Gordon Brown prepared to fly to Beijing, Mr Burnham rejected a Tory report claiming that funds were being diverted from grass-root sports to bail out the cost of the London games.

The Conservatives alleged that local sports groups were being forced to sacrifice £70million towards the cost of the event, while former Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew warned that school swimming pools were being closed.

But Mr Burnham insisted that money spent on the 2012 games would result in a genuine legacy of more sports participation at the local level.

He also pointed out that Britain's success in cycling in Beijing proved that the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games had produced a tangible legacy London could learn from.

"The legacy of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester has been hugely important to our cyclists - the base they have there with the velodrome in Manchester, the infrastructure they have built up around it," he said. "I think that is a really important part of our legacy of the Commonwealth Games. Real lessons there for London 2012."

He told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour that the £9.3billion cost of the London games would increase participation for all. "It's erroneous to suggest that money has no legacy impact in terms of improving sport and indeed grass-roots sport in this country," he said. The minister came under fire from shadow culture, media and sport secretary Jeremy Hunt over the Olympic legacy plans. The Tories' study pointed out that Sport England, which is having its budget cut by eight per cent, or £56 million, had warned that 186,000 fewer people would take part in sport as a result.

The Government wants to get two million more people active by 2012. Ministers originally set a target for children to do at least two hours of sport a week, and have now pledged to offer five hours of "quality" sport per week for children aged between five and 16 in England by 2012, and three hours a week for those aged between 16 and 19.

Yet the report revealed that nearly one million children - 14 per cent of all young people - were not meeting the minimum of two hours of sport a week. Recruitment targets for PE teachers had been slashed from 1,450 a year in 2006 to 1,180 this year, while budgets for local sports bodies had been cut by £70million to pay for Olympics overspending.

Mr Hunt said: "It's time the Government got a grip on the Olympics and treated the legacy as equally important as hosting the Games itself."

Mr Burnham hailed a "great weekend for British sport" after the UK team collected a total of eight gold medals in cycling, swimming, rowing and sailing. He said it was now important to maintain the momentum in the buildup to the 2012 London Olympics.

"I want this Olympic period for Britain to be the time when the place of sport in our society changed for ever," he told Sky News's Sunday Live programme. "We've now got to take this momentum and take it to a new level."