"The Jubilee at the moment, the bill is going to be roughly one per cent of the Olympic swimming pool."

Robert Hardman, Today Programme, 16 January 2012

'Writer and royal observer' Robert Hardman claimed on the Today programme yesterday that for every pound spent on the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, £100 is spent on the the Olympic swimming facilities.

So is the money being given over to the royal festivities but a drop in the ocean compared to the Olympic aquatics? Full Fact dives in at the deep end to discover more.

Analysis

The first problem we encounter when trying to compare the Jubilee costs with those of the Olympic aquatics centre is one of scope. For example, the cost of the Jubilee could include the money being spent by central government, local councils and even the costs to the economy of the extra day's bank holiday.

When it comes to the Olympic Aquatics Centre, there have been discrepancies in the press reporting on how much the project would cost. The Olympic bid of 2005 estimated that the swimming pool would cost £75 million, although the Telegraph reported in 2008 that the cost had quadrupled to £303 million. The BBC was slightly more reserved, recording a figure of £242 million.

In fact, the DCMS now predicts that the final cost will be around £253 million.

One per cent of this sum is around £2.5 million. So if we take this as the baseline, how does the bill for the Jubilee compare?

In terms of central government spending, an HM Treasury document from 2010 announced that £1 million would be set aside from the budget for the Queen's jubilee celebrations.

However the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), who are charged with organising the Jubilee celebrations, have noted that there will be a number of other costs incurred by the taxpayer besides the festivities. For example, DCMS Minister Hugh Robertson stated in a Parliamentary Answer that Government was planning to spend between £7-8 million on the production of "diamond Jubilee medals."

On top of this figure is the cash spent by local councils are set to spend. Anti-monarchy campaigners Republic have attempted to estimate the costs incurred by these authorities to the public purse.

In their study they used the Freedom of Information act to uncover around £547,000 worth of spending throughout the country. However, of the 251 councils which replied to the survey only 43 gave conclusive data, 97 stated that they had no plans and the rest were yet confirm their budget sheets.

Besides these sums, we could also consider the cost to the UK economy of an extra bank holiday.

The DCMS published a report last year which attempted to estimate the impact of the Jubilee holiday weekend. The net loss to the British economy was an estimated £1.2 billion.

This figure is calculated by averaging the costs of worst case scenario and the best case scenario. The best case scenario would make Britain a total gain of a little over £1 billion and the worst case scenario would see Britain lose £3.5 billion.

Conclusion

Whether or not the bill for the Queen's jubilee celebrations will total just one hundredth of the costs associated with the Olympic swimming pool is therefore contentious.

While it is certainly true that the sums expected to be spent on the festivities alone is relatively small (less than half of a per cent of an Olympic swimming pool), once we factor in other government-funded activities marking the occassion, as well as the money spent by councils, the bill quickly escalates above the one per cent mark.

Indeed if we look at the costs to the economy as a whole of the Jubilee celebrations, the research indicates that it would be around four times as much as the whole of the Olympic Aquatics Centre.