London 'has lessons to learn' from Beijing Games

The government is working to fill all seats at London's 2012 Games, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has said.

Jowell, who is in Beijing for the 2008 Games, told the BBC that London had "lots of lessons to learn".

Officially, the Beijing Games are officially sold out, but there were empty seats at some early events.

Jowell added that she was working with the organising committee there, to help ensure London did not experience the same problem.

"Clearly our aim is to make sure seats are filled," she said.

If they were not filled "by people who have paid the full price", they should be filled by schoolchildren she said.

"But there are rules that the International Olympic Committee set about ticket pricing," Jowell added.

"We have got to look at how we apply those rules in practice to minimise the serried rows of empty seats."

The minister also said that London's stadium would probably be scaled down after 2012 Games.

"The Bird's Nest stadium is probably the last iconic Olympics stadium," she said.

"Why? Because its capacity is a bit over 85,000 - in the UK we have an 85,000 seater stadium - more than - and it's our national stadium, Wembley.

"We don't need another 85,000 seater stadium. You can't, on the one hand, bemoan the fact that we are not going to have an iconic stadium like the Bird's Nest and at the same time go on about white elephants being left behind after the Olympics are over.

"Our focus is making sure that every single Olympic building has a very clear legacy purpose and if there isn't legacy need then we will build temporary venues and take them down at the end."