Sport England will not be made Wembley scapegoat, says chief

Sport England will not be made the scapegoat for the Wembley Stadium fiasco, its head declared yesterday.

MPs are preparing to release a scathing report condemning the lax controls shown by the organisation, which granted the crisis-hit project £120m of lottery money before planning permission had been issued.

The Government has also announced that it will review the way in which big lottery grants are distributed.

The plan to build a new multisports stadium on the Wembley site has been plagued with delays and difficulties since it was first approved in 1996. The scheme has been reviewed several times, projected costs have soared and organisers have had trouble raising the funding. The current stadium has not hosted a sporting event since October 2000.

But David Moffett, the recently appointed chief executive, said: "I think Sport England, in some quarters, has most likely been unfairly maligned as being the perpetrator of all of the evils of Wembley, when, quite simply, it is not the case.

"We have made some mistakes on the way, though, as have all the other people involved in the project."

Mr Moffett, the former head of the Australian rugby league, who took over at Sport England in January, also launched a passionate defence of the scheme to build the new stadium at Wembley. His comments are a further blow to Birmingham's hopes of winning approval to proceed with a rival bid if the Wembley project fails at the last moment.

"Wembley is the biggest single stadium brand in the world, bar none," Mr Moffett told The Independent. "Football is unassailable as the world number one game and Wembley is unassailable, in my view, as the world's number one stadium.

"Wherever you go in the world, people have heard of Wembley and it would quite disastrous at this stage to contemplate England without [it], if it can be done along the lines that have been outlined."

Mr Moffett and his colleagues endured a grilling when they appeared last week before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which is investigating the Wembley saga.

He said: "What we have to do is wait for the report to come out and consider it in great detail. There are already areas of criticism that have been recognised and there may be other areas that we are in the process of rectifying."

Mr Moffett hit back at suggestions that the Wembley saga, and the failure of plans to host the 2005 World Athletics Championships at Picketts Lock, north London, meant Britain was unable to stage prestigious national events.

"That is absolutely garbage," he said. "We are going to have a great Commonwealth Games, and we are in the middle of the golden jubilee celebrations, which take an enormous amount of organisation."

However, he said he wanted Britain to learn from Australia, whose sporting achievements were far superior. "Unlike England, Australia sees itself as a sporting nation," he said. "It's not just the climate ... it's about living and breathing something.

"It's a little bit about respect. People do genuinely respect Australia for what they are doing on the sporting field."