West Ham United Football Club will have to pay off all its £70 million bank debt before it can take up tenancy at the Olympic Stadium in 2016, Apprentice star Karen Brady has revealed.

Lord Alan Sugar’s aide and Vice Chairman of West Ham, Karen Brady was giving evidence to the House of Lords committee on Olympic and Paralympic legacy yesterday insisting that the club was not getting the stadium on the cheap and that the deal was good value to the taxpayer.

West Ham has £35 million worth of the debt secured on its stadium Upton Park.

The Club was taken over by a subsidiary of the Icelandic Bank, Straumur back in 2009, with a further 30 per cent of ownership going to three other similar Icelandic banks Landsbanki NP and Byr.

The Club previously had a buyer in place for the Stadium, however that failed to materialise after the delays to the deal to become Olympic Stadium tenants.

Karren Brady said:  "We did have a tentative deal [for Upton Park] but that fell away. We hope the money generated from the sale of Upton Park will be enough to fulfil our commitment and to help pay off some of our bank debt.

"When we bought the club and took on more than £100 million of debt that was guaranteed on the ground. We have to pay off all our bank debt to move, we can't take the debt with us. If there is any excess [from the sale of Upton Park] it will meet some of that debt but I don't expect there will be."

The Vice Chairman was also asked to respond to a claim that West Ham was getting the £600 million stadium for only £15 million - with the taxpayer paying off the rest.

Brady responded: "The alternative scenario does not bear thinking about. West Ham is not getting a free stadium. The stadium was built for the Olympics and what are we going to do with it? Across the world, stadiums that are not used die. Without anchor tenants the cost would be huge to the taxpayer."