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David Cameron has commissioned a review of London's £1.5 billion Olympics security operation by former intelligence chief Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the Evening Standard has learned.
The Conservative leader has asked her to study the plans to keep spectators and athletes safe at the event.
Dame Pauline will liaise with police and security authorities over coming months, even though the Conservatives are in opposition at present.
Mr Cameron wants to ensure the best possible counter-terrorism protection is in place. He is also concerned that policing costs do not run out of control.
Olympic security budgets have mushroomed in the past decade. London organisers hoped to spend £500 million on security but estimates have tripled in just four years.
The Atlanta Olympics of 1996 cost £100 million to police and secure. Organisers of the 2004 Athens Games originally intended to spend a similar sum — but the bill ballooned to somewhere between £650 million and a staggering £1 billion.
Dame Pauline, a former chairman of the Joint-Intelligence Committee, which oversees the work of MI5 and MI6, was appointed shadow security minister by Mr Cameron in 2007 with a brief to overhaul counter-terrorism policy.
Speaking to the Standard, she confirmed she had already begun work on the project. “Certainly David is concerned, as he should be, that we stage an Olympics that is both safe and efficient,” she said.
Reader views (3)
I hope your wrong Simon but it must be a real worry considering we're so unpopular with most of the world now!
- Mark, Watford
A terrorist attack on the London Olympics must be considered more of a probability than a possibility, for simple and logical reasons...
Terrorists at home and overseas will have had years to plan an attack. The Olympic Games in London are a perfect opportunity for them to send a message to the world.
The security services cannot hope to successfully intercept ALL of the planned terrorist attacks, we already know this from recent experience eg Glasgow, Exeter
There are too many potential targets to be defended, whether it be the venues or the transport infrastructure. How on earth could anybody hope to secure the full route of the Olympic marathon course, for example?
It will only take one successful attack and the Games will have to be abandoned. Indeed, even an unsuccessful attack at any point may be sufficient to cause a withdrawal by competing nations.
It seems to me that intelligent people (and journalists?!) must be sticking their heads in the sand if they cannot see how unlikely the London Olympics are to escape being abandoned and living in the annals of history for all of the wrong reasons. What will that do to London's (and Britain's) reputation for generations to come?
- Simon B, Bristol
I take it the full cost of this will be paid for by the Conservative party given their is no gaurantee of this report ever being needed!!
After all given the cost of MPs expenses we cant waste money on party political exercises now can we...
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
