Hansard

I usually take interventions but, with so much to cover in five minutes, I will not have the time to do so. I begin by thanking the Criminal Justice Committee clerks, the bill team and those who gave evidence to the committee.

Although fireworks are the source of great enjoyment to many people, including me and the fun-filled Willie Rennie, others regard them as a nuisance or indeed worse.

The Scottish Government’s firework review group first met in December 2019 and produced its report almost a year later. Now, just 18 months after that, following a fast-track timetable, we have this bill in front of us. Let us strip it back. It does three main things. It requires anyone buying or using fireworks to have a licence; it creates firework control zones; and it limits firework use by the public to 57 days per year. Many key details remain unknown, with the Government in effect saying, “Trust us, pass the bill and we’ll work it all out later”. That is just not good enough.

I will now turn to those three main issues. Perhaps the most contentious is licensing. We still do not know how much a licence will cost. If we compare it to the Northern Irish model, it is anticipated that around 1,500 Scots may apply for a licence, yet up to 250,000 people in Scotland buy fireworks annually. What will those people do instead? Our concern is that the SNP’s licensing scheme is so badly flawed that it will drive people to a black market. No work has been done on addressing that concern. This risks achieving the opposite of what is intended—a rise in firework misuse and the type of injuries that the minister described in her opening statement.

At stage 2, I secured an agreement from the minister that applicants for a licence must disclose convictions for fire-raising, yet she refused to budge on the disclosure of other convictions, including antisocial behaviour, football violence and even terrorism. My attempts to increase sentencing were also rejected.

Let us look at firework control zones. People might think, from their name, that firework use would be prohibited in those areas. It is not. At stage 2, I secured an agreement from the minister to ban professional displays in private gardens within these zones, but public displays will still be allowed. As Katy Clark said, that will not help pet owners, farmers or people with sensory issues who wanted clearly defined areas in which fireworks were completely banned.

Then there is the issue of fireworks being used on only 57 days. The Government has failed to properly explain how it arrived at those dates. It seems inevitable that other cultural or religious occasions will need to be added in the future. The bill limits firework sales to 37 days, which surely risks dangerous stockpiling in people’s homes. Also—and this is a big one—professional companies will still be free to operate on 365 days of the year. As with the flawed firework control zones, that will do nothing for those seeking respite from noise.

This bill has been rushed. My colleague Jamie Greene has already explained why—so that proxy purchasing for under-18s could be dealt with quickly—but there was no need to rush. In doing so, we are left with a bill that contains huge gaps and may make existing problems even worse.

I have been immersed in the bill for months and it is still not easily understood. To be frank, it is confusing.

The Scottish Conservatives tried to fix it as best we can. I commend Jamie Greene for securing an aggravator for people who use fireworks to attack emergency service workers. I lodged 46 amendments at stage 2 and 12 at stage 3, some of which were accepted.

Many of my party’s concerns can be seen in the stage 2 debate and the Criminal Justice Committee’s highly critical stage 1 report. Members should remember that the report was agreed to with the backing of SNP members on the understanding that the Government would address our points of concern, but it has failed to do so.

Many critical questions remain unanswered. We already have nine separate laws that deal with firework misuse, but it is painfully apparent that they are not being used to their full extent. I share the industry’s real fears that the bill could become the catalyst for a dangerous and unregulated black market in Scotland. The Government admits that it will be powerless to police online firework sales.

The minister described the bill as groundbreaking. I fear that she might be right. If the bill were a firework, it would be the dodgy one that fizzles out and falls over on the lawn and that it is best not to approach. Although we are aligned entirely with the bill’s intention, we cannot support such clunky and convoluted legislation, which might end up doing more harm than good. It is important that we are honest about that with the public and the stakeholders who engaged in the process.

We will abstain today and, judging by the comments from Katy Clark and Pauline McNeill, I am hopeful that Labour might consider doing so also. However, we understand that the bill is still likely to pass.