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ANNA JONES: Well the Sunday Times has published more claims of corruption this morning over the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The Qatar government and the 2022 bid team deny any wrongdoing.  The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has said if the allegations are verified there will be an overwhelming case for reopening the bidding process.  Well I’m joined now by the former Sports Minister, David Mellor, so more allegations in again today, just how damaging are these latest set would you say?

DAVID MELLOR: Well I think they are no more damaging than they were last week, I think they are scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit but what is deeply damaging is that FIFA ever allowed the decision to go in favour of Qatar.  I am perfectly happy about Qatar, I go there, I have got lots of friends in Qatar.  Qatar is big friends with the UK, invests a lot of money in Britain and so on but why on earth they thought that they wanted to host a World Cup, Qatar is a tiny place, it is socially conservative which means it is not going to be a very welcoming place for the sort of people that support football, you know, yobs like me.  It’s also going to be extremely difficult to play in – and the FIFA people should have known this – with temperatures 40 to 50 degrees centigrade.  Already they are talking about having it at a different time of year so essentially this decision was very rum, let’s say stank to high heaven right from the start.  Now why these people on FIFAs executive collectively took leave of their senses we don’t know.  Was it induced by money from Mr Hammam or was it merely collective lunacy for quite another reason but what is quite clear is that this World Cup should never have been awarded to Qatar and can never be played in Qatar and the only issue is how soon will the whole thing be pulled.

AJ: Well you say that and yet we are still waiting of course for the investigation that FIFA launched some time ago looking at the bid process by Michael Garcia of course, their New York attorney who’s looking into this.  He may find there is absolutely no wrongdoing in which case it will go ahead in Qatar.

DAVID MELLOR: That’s the nightmare scenario.  Look, this thing will not go ahead, Mystic Mellor, I predict it will not go ahead, it cannot go ahead.  It is impossible to stage a World Cup in a tiny place like Qatar with the temperature, social concerns, all the stuff I have already said.  Now Mr Garcia, here’s an interesting fellow, he is apparently going to bring forward his decision without reviewing the Sunday Times’ evidence – huh? – and without speaking to Mr Bin Hammam – huh, huh?  What’s going on here?  William Hague come in with a typically professional performance and he said we must await the outcome of the inquiry.  What all these people are hoping throughout the world of football and throughout the world of politics is that Mr Garcia will say absolutely no way, it should never have happened, there were irregularities, scrap it.  But if Mr Garcia says ah-ha, it’s all right, that’s not going to put an end to this, it’s just going to rumble on and on and on.  Meanwhile, it is totally overshadowing this Brazil World Cup, that and unrest in Sao Paulo is destroying the magic there used to be for the World Cup.   There is another similarly dodgy World Cup coming up in Russia in four years’ time and then there is this one in Qatar and I think all of us who care about football say enough, enough, enough.  As at the end of the opera Pagliacci, la commedia e finita, the comedy is over. 

AJ: A lot of people say once the football starts this will be forgotten, the football will be enjoyed and if as you say, you think it’s inevitable that it won’t happen in Qatar but the practicalities of rerunning a bid, of another country taking it on when Qatar has spent a lot of money already, they are huge aren’t they?

DAVID MELLOR: They have spent a lot of money, nearly a thousand people have apparently died trying to build the stadiums, not a single person died building the Olympic facilities in the UK.  It wouldn’t be difficult and I’ll tell you why, normally the World Cups are granted on a four year by four year basis, this one, and that’s one of the many bizarre things that have happened in that decision, they decided to run in the 2018 and the 2022 decisions together, maybe so they could get two dodgy decisions out in the space of ten seconds, which they did.  So 2022 is a long way away, they could perfectly well change it and they have to change it but more fundamental than changing the World Cup in Qatar is changing FIFA.  Only root and branch reform of FIFA will put world football back on track.  

AJ: Okay, David Mellor, thank you.