The bill would bolster police search powers and give them the authority to seek out performance-enhancing drugs as well as illegal substances.

Moynihan, a former Sports Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Government, who now sits in the House of Lords as a Tory Peer, claimed that new bill was a "necessary" weapon to clamp down on drugs suppliers and cheats in the build-up to London 2012 and would bring Britain into line with other countries that already have the legislation on their statue books, including France and Italy.

He said: "That would mean that if someone was blood doping at the Olympic Village in 2012, they [the police] would have the right under law to search the premises under a warrant.

"It is not that uncommon in Games.

"It has happened at the Winter Olympics.

"If athletes know that could happen, we are going to deter people from cheating and doing themselves harm.

"It is important that it should be on the statute book."

Moynihan, who won an Olympic silver medal at the 1980 Games in Moscow when he was a cox for the men's eights, claimed that it would strengthen the police's ability to stamp out drug abuse in sport.

He said: "At the moment, they do not have the ability to search unless it is for prohibited substances, like heroin, and not performance-enhancing drugs.

"This is to extend it to performance-enhancing drugs so that would be all the drugs on the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency] list."

Moynihan's proposed bill coincides with the setting-up last month of the new UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) agency who plan to make greater use of intelligence, including hiring private detectives and whistle-blowers, in an attempt to try to catch more athletes using drugs.

The experience from previous countries who have staged the Olympics, is that the opportunity of competing in a home Games tempts more athletes to experiment with banned drugs.

Moynihan said: "I think that hosting the next Olympic and Paralympic Games allows us to focus on the whole issue of anti-doping in sport; perhaps more so than has been done before.
 
"I do not believe the bill will be contentious."

Moynihan, who has already held talks with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over his proposed bill, knows he faces the prospect of it being delayed by the General Election, which is expected to be held in May, but still hopes for it to become law by July 2011.

Dwain Chambers (pictured), the British sprinter banned for two years in 2003 after he tested positive for the designer anabolic steroid Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), wrote in his autobiography last year of how he used to travel to major competitions with "enough drugs [in my bag to] kill an elephant."

The Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe has already called for such a law to be introduced that would allow the police to raid athletes' rooms.

He said: "We don't want to criminalise athletes, but I think it would be fair if it was a condition of entry.

"In countries where the use of some performance-enhancing drugs is illegal, such as Italy, police are able to raid premises if they suspect that an athlete is cheating."

The Italian police have used their powers to search athletes rooms for drugs on several occasions, including at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin when they raided the private living quarters of the Austrian cross country ski and biathlon team and found banned substances and blood transfusion equipment.

The French authorities have used similar powers to enter and search to raid a number of cycling teams during major events in the country, including the Tour de France, and have prosecuted a number of the sport's leading names found to have been using banned drugs, including Alex Zülle and Richard Virenque.

It was a raid by French police in June 2004 that exposed Britain's David Millar as having used EPO when he won the World Time Trial Championship in 2003, leading to a two-year ban, although he escaped prosecution because the authorities did not have enough evidence to present a case that the Scot had taken the banned drug within their borders.

This latest proposal, Moynihan believes, will also strengthen Britain's reputation as having the most draconian anti-doping programme in the world.

He has constantly backed the BOA by-law which prevents drugs cheats like Chambers and Millar, from representing Britain in the Olympics.

In the build-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Chambers challenged the ban in the High Court but was defeated.

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