Games ministers ignored report saying only benefit would be a national party

An official report which concluded that the London Olympics would fail to deliver sporting or economic benefits was ignored by ministers, it was claimed today.

The 250-page strategy document, called Game Plan, was signed off in December 2002 by Tony Blair as Prime Minister. It found that the only justification for hosting the Olympics was that it would be a morale-boosting national party.

Leading economists and civil servants reached their conclusion after being commissioned by Mr Blair's strategy unit and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Despite its downbeat assessment, the Cabinet backed a bid on the basis that it would increase sports participation and regenerate east London. Sebastian Coe then sold the bid to the International Olympic Committee in 2005.

John Clark, the report's chief author, said: "We concluded that countries should host the Olympics only for reasons of national celebration because the economic rationale is weak."

It is claimed that Game Plan, intended as a framework for sports policy for the next decade and whether Britain should bid for events such as the Olympics and football World Cup, was quietly forgotten.

"This was a robust report that showed why we should not bid for the Olympics but it was an inconvenient truth. Almost the moment the ink was dry, there was a volte-face," said Stefan Szymanski, a professor at Cass Business School told The Times. "The justification for bidding should have been based on evidence placed in the public domain. Instead key evidence was suppressed or ignored."

The claims raise the question of why ministers backed a bid citing reasons dismissed by their own experts.

Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister who sponsored Game Plan, admitted this month that a bid would probably not have been pursued if the recession had been foreseen. Alex Story, a former Olympic rower who monitors 2012 for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "On both the cost and the benefits to youngsters, ministers oversold the Games. It was a false prospectus." The findings strengthen concerns there was no proper analysis of the Games, whose cost to the taxpayer has more than tripled from £2.4 billion during the bid to £9.3 billion today.

Game Plan examined five types of benefits widely used to make the case for investing in large-scale events: urban regeneration; sporting legacy; tourism; celebration and culture; and wider economic uplift. It concluded: "The quantifiable evidence to support each of the perceived benefits for mega-events is weak ... be clear that they appear to be more about celebration than economic return."