Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games : ninth report of session 2012-13, report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence

The chaos which has emerged over the G4S Olympics security contract was predictable and undermines confidence in those responsible for managing the Games.

There is now a last minute scramble to make sure there will be enough security personnel on the ground.

In evidence given before Christmas, all those concerned gave assurances that the contract could be met despite more than doubling the number of guards.

No credible explanation has been given for an astonishing twelve-fold hike in management costs, from GBP10 million to GBP125 million, and G4S still has not been able to deliver.

Now troops are having to be drafted in. The Home Office needs to get a grip on LOCOG and G4S urgently.

It is still not known just how many security guards will actually be delivered or whether G4S will face any penalty.

The Committee will carry out a post-mortem in September.

There is also dissatisfaction with how the DCMS has engaged with the Committee.

Legitimate monitoring of implementation has been an unnecessarily frustrating process, characterized by a resistance to giving clear and consistent information and a readiness to depart from proper ways of conducting public business. A big concern is that the Department has no intention of producing a single auditable account for the Games, drawing together both the costs within the Public Sector Funding Package of GBP9.3 billion and those outside.

Such an analysis must be produced