Jowell rejects reopening stadium

Tessa Jowell has dismissed speculation that Wembley Stadium, built 80 years ago, could be rebuilt if plans to replace it with a new home for English football collapse.

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport insisted yesterday that a deal to construct a new £715m national stadium was in sight.

But she could not provide a firm date for the contract's signing when she appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and in a statement to the Commons later in the day.

She also announced a review of how lottery grants are distributed, in response to fierce criticism of the £120m committed to Wembley with few safeguards.

Earlier, the football authorities revealed fall-back proposals to rebuild the old stadium, which outraged the backers of a rival bid from Birmingham. Ms Jowell said: "At a point where there is now moss growing on the walls and grass growing up between the seats, is there anybody who seriously thinks this would be the route by which the lottery money would in practice be returned?"

She said it would cost £40m to reopen the mothballed stadium to make it a place where any football fan, however ardent, "would want to spend an afternoon".

But Richard Burden, the Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, said the city and the rest of England had been misled by the Football Association and demanded compensation for the money spent on the Birmingham bid. The Labour MP for Wolverhampton South-east, Dennis Turner, said: "The majority of football supporters in this country would welcome the national stadium coming to Birmingham."

Ms Jowell told MPs that the current negotiations between the FA and the German bank Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) to secure £400m of funding represented the "last chance" for the scheme. If they failed, she said talks should start on the Birmingham bid.

She said the FA expected to sign a "heads of agreement" with WestLB in the next seven days, with the deal completed within 10 weeks. But she warned that this was an "indicative rather than definitive" timetable and added: "This is not yet a done deal."

Ms Jowell conceded that more work needed to be done with groups that distributed lottery money over the risks involved in big projects. One possibility is that the Office of Government Commerce will scrutinise high-risk schemes funded by the lottery.

* Only the intervention of Tony Blair and senior ministers saved the Commonwealth Games in Manchester from collapse, the culture, media and sport committee said yesterday. MPs praised Ian McCartney, who was Cabinet Office minister before the last election, saying he "galvanised the whole process and almost certainly saved the games" to be held in July. But they criticised Mr Blair for failing to reappoint a minister responsible for the games after the election last year.

The MPs' report reinforces appeals for senior figures in Government to help drive through bids for major sporting events and projects such as the redevelopment of Wembley.