Newport West AM Rosemary Butler has been pressing First Minister Rhodri Morgan for assurances that Newport will be compensated for any lottery money lost to the area as a result of funds being diverted to the London Olympics.

The Alliance, an all party association of local authroities in industrial areas in the UK, has estimated that Wales will lose £107m as a result of the Olympics and thast Newport will lose £5.1m.

At question time in the Assembly she questioned the First Minister about it.

Rosemary Butler: "You said that £1 billion of lottery funding has been given to Wales in the past 13 years, which is a substantial amount of money for the Welsh economy. However, it is estimated that Newport will lose about £5.1 million as a result of the diversion of funds to the Olympic Games.

"I am a great supporter of the London Olympics, but I do not believe that the residents of Newport should suffer as a result of the diversion of this money. Can you reassure us that you will do everything that you can to ensure that there will be some long-term compensation, such as the re-channelling of funds back to Wales once land used for the Olympics has been sold?"

The First Minister: "If land values for the legacy expenditure remain high, or increase, it is certainly the case that that will help to reduce the impact of the diversion of lottery expenditure to the Olympics.

"However, we can only guess what will happen to land values once the Olympics are over, when temporary facilities such as car parking, transport, security and warm-up facilities disappear so that the land can be sold for housing.

"What sort of money can be made from that? I am not in a position to start guessing. Many people think that the UK Government's estimate is already pretty generous, but we will have to see what happens in five years' time."

Tuesday, January 22nd