YES - Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Olympics and London

MS JOWELL said the original vision of the bid was to "use the power of sport to reconnect young people with sport" and "regenerate one of the most deprived parts of east London".

She said: "Not for one moment are we complacent because there are massive challenges ahead but there is a track record of success so I am confident we won't let London down.

"We will deliver the Games within the budget of £9.3 billion. Yes, it went up but once and only once. It is not spiralling out of control. We will cut costs if they begin to rise.

"We have seen possibly the greatest tennis match of all time - imagine four billion people watching from around the world. What a great opportunity to showcase our great city to the rest of the world."

She said the Games were also about giving London the sporting facilities it deserves.

She added: "Seventy-five pence of every pound we are spending will go on long-term regeneration. The Games won't just be good for London, they will be good for the whole of the UK and when they come they will be just great.

"We can be confident that when the end comes the whole city will be galvanised and there will be cheap travel for people wanting to travel from anywhere in London."

She said the Games would help close the gap between sport participation in young people and those competing at an elite level.

"Watching sport on the television is a completely different experience from sport on the playing field or running track. All the evidence we have is that the legacy plans we have round the city will close the gap."

NO - Will Self, author and Evening Standard columnist

With typically sardonic wit, Mr Self lambasted the Games, labelling them a "running and jumping festival".

He said providing sports facilities in schools would be a better use of money than paying for the Games.

He said: "I am not very interested in the Olympics. It is all about building a shopping mall out in Stratford. I live in London and have four children of school age. None of my kids have swimming lessons at school. Sporting facilities are parlous and pitiful.

"If you want new transport infrastructure why don't they just build it rather than use the excuse of a running and jumping festival? If you want to build social housing in the city why don't we just build social housing?

"I am not a cynic. My problem with what Tessa Jowell has said is they are the real cynics. They don't believe you can do anything to help people in the city without involving the private sector. They don't believe anything could be done without a corporate logo slapped on it. They don't believe anything could be done without appealing to people' basest instincts.

"It is good, old-fashioned boosterism at the end of the day. Wait for the economic downturn and see if these figures hold up.

"I don't want to be a Cassandra about this - maybe it will all come off fantastically. I would rather my kids do not have to take a 45-minute bus journey to their nearest playing field. That would inspire them."

He said having seen dilapidated stadia in Montreal in the Seventies, he was fearful of the after-effects of the 2012 Games if costs are not well managed. "It could really go dreadfully wrong - the city (Montreal) was almost bankrupted by the maladministration. You cannot manipulate London as if it were a planned city. It has its own anarchic and strange ways. It is bigger than the Labour Government, it will be bigger than the Conservative Government.

"London is more likely to be paralysed than galvanised."

MAYBE - Kate Hoey MP, Commissioner for Sport

Ms Hoey said strategic plans had to be put in place to increase sport participation for the Games to be considered a success.

She said: "There is excitement about the Olympics but it will only be truly good for London if it leaves a real sporting legacy for every Londoner. I don't think we are going to see the funding or the commitment at a national level - there is no joined-up thinking.

"We really do need in London a programme that increases participation. It will be a wonderful show for everyone but it is not good enough just to have a legacy for the Olympic Park and some regeneration aspects. Every Londoner in four years' time must feel they have seen some improvement in their area.

"They will live with the increased cost if they see a tangible sporting legacy. We are still to create that long term sport legacy but we do not have very long. If anything we have left it rather late in starting."

She said more must be done to ensure young people were motivated by the Olympics enough to take up sport and strive for excellence. "The Olympics cost a huge amount of money. I am not griping about the cost. It is about what is happening at grass roots. There has to be a financial budget for some legacy projects and if we have not got that we have to be honest about it."

NO - Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard columnist

He said: "I think the Olympics has some claim to be the greatest con trick in the contemporary world. I have no doubt London's stadia will be ready on time, but the absolute empirical evidence is that it is largely a fraud.

"Some of the main winners always turn out to be on drugs. This 'festival of health' is supported by McDonald's and Pepsi Cola. Apart from Barcelona, hosting the Games has left cities at best not better off and at worst with considerable debt. Anything described as an 'Olympic legacy' seems to be happening already without the Games." He said the first proposal for housing redevelopment in Stratford was submitted as early as 2003.

"Out of a total budget of £9.3billion, £1.7billion is earmarked for regeneration and infrastructure - that is 18 per cent in every pound, not 75p (as Ms Jowell claimed). That proportion can only shrink."

He said the Games would damage London's economy and tourist industries. "Three of our Royal Parks will have to be closed throughout most of the summer. For the duration of the Games London will be turned into an armed camp. We can't give the Olympics back - we have to make the best of it."

Mr Gilligan said plans for lesser arenas such as basketball events should be scrapped, making use of existing facilities instead. "It is already too late to cancel the main stadium, the giant pudding, but if we act now we can prevent further host cities from conforming to this daft IOC template. We hear stirring objectives which no one can disagree with but no explanation whatsoever of how we are actually going to bring that about."

YES - Lord Coe, chairman of the 2012 organising committee

Lord Coe said London needed the Games to ensure it had world-class facilities to foster elite athletes. He said lack of facilities in London were caused by poor political decisions, and admitted it should not have taken the Games to regenerate east London.

He said: "I am proud that sport has brought this timeline forward and yes, has created a shopping centre in east London. What has changed is the ambition. We don't need 9,000 homes to stage the Games, we don't need to clean up rivers. But why not do it at the same time?

"There are 3,000 people working on the Olympic site, and there will be 20,000 in four years' time. I am very proud that sport has played the hidden social worker again.

"There has not been a single London swimmer in the last two Olympic Games or World Championships. If the swimming pool is closing in your borough it is not about the Olympic Games, it is about bad political judgments. London is a third world city for sport. The greatest drive for sport participation is the well-stocked shop window. This city will do extremely well out of these Games.

"Let's do it very very well and recharge a generation that people have ignored for far too many years. This is our chance to pull back some of the territory we have lost."

The former Olympic champion said he wanted to introduce sports which do not have "handholds" in inner cities. "There is a whole generation of Londoners who do not know anything about equestrian sport. One of the driving factors was getting some of these sports into the inner city."

Video: watch highlights from the debate here