Chamber and committees

That is interesting and helpful—thank you. I do not want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but I am sure that other local authorities and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have similar comments to make. I hope that we will get their feedback in due course, to inform our stage 1 report.

We are considering a nationwide approach to the restriction of sale and purchase of fireworks. When we consider other schemes that we have devolved to councils, such as low-emission zones and the workplace parking levy—I am thinking about schemes for which councils, rather than the Government, are responsible, with legislation enabling you in that regard—how much flexibility would your council want on, for example, timescales, the period of use, and exemptions and exceptions? Would you want to offer enhanced flexibility in your area, to meet the needs of your communities? I am thinking about religious groups, local events and so on.

In other words, is it better to have local schemes, which are locally administered, or a national scheme? Would it be better to have 32 separate and flexible schemes?

Good afternoon to our panel of guests. I have two questions, which I think must be directed to Julie Whitelaw—I am sorry to pick on you, but I think that you are the only local authority representative from whom we will take evidence, given the nature of efforts to squeeze in evidence sessions.

How realistic is it to think that a licensing scheme can be up and running this year? The Government has the ambitious timescale of putting the proposed restrictions in place by bonfire night this year. We have expressed a little disquiet about that; we want to get the legislation right. Indeed, we think that the licensing scheme will not feature in the bill and will probably be the subject of regulations, which the committee will have to consider subsequently.

Given that there are so many known unknowns, of which we do not have details, how quickly will councils be able to set up schemes? It is councils that will be required to administer the schemes. Is it realistic to do that in time for this year’s bonfire night? Will that come at a financial or resource cost for councils? Will you be able to meet the demands that might be placed on you in the coming months?

That is great. Thank you for that. That is all I have for now, convener.

Thank you. That feedback was helpful.

Good. Thank you.

That is very helpful and interesting. Of course, it gets dark quite early in winter, so people are more likely to see fireworks at the time of day that you talked about.

I appreciate the long answer, because that explanation was required to give us the backdrop to how you got to where you are.

I guess that a range of options would have been available to you. However, it strikes me as a little bit concerning—this is my only point of concern—that the industry that will be affected most by the regulations is the one that did not sign up to the recommendations. That is an odd position to be in.

The three strands in the consultation were the sale, purchase and use of fireworks. It seems to me that, although support is high, at 84 per cent, for the control of purchase using a licence scheme, the support wanes slightly, going down to 67 per cent, for restrictions on the use of fireworks, and wanes even further, going down to 64 per cent, when we get down to restrictions on the sale of fireworks, which is perhaps the strand with which the BFA had a lot of issues.

Is it not an issue for you that the people who will go out of business or who will be most immediately affected by the bill do not agree with the way that we are proposing to tackle the problem?

The bill contains five periods of restrictions around the sale and use of fireworks. Could those be deemed to be arbitrary? For example, they include some religious festivals such as Diwali and the Sikh festival, Vaisakhi, but not others, such as Eid and Hanukkah. Might that be open to challenge in the future? Should the bill therefore allow flexibility for other religious or secular organisations to ask for exemptions from the restrictions?

The point of the licence might be to require people to go through some hoops, whether that is training or an online course, as is the case with other things. However, no online course is required in order to be allowed to buy kitchen knives, yet they are hugely dangerous, and no online course is required in order to be allowed to buy alcohol, yet it is a problem in society and causes antisocial behaviour. Why is the licence on its own not enough? Why do we have to go to the point of, in effect, closing down the industry in order to tackle the problem?

My only point is the obvious one, which is that I am concerned that the instrument is subject to the negative procedure. The issue was raised previously. The only way to deal with instruments under that procedure is to annul them in the chamber rather than to agree to them proactively as a committee, as is the case with the affirmative procedure. I want to feed back to the Government that, in the future, such sweeping regulations, on which we have taken a bit of evidence—not all positive—should be dealt with via other forms of legislation or the affirmative procedure. That should be the case at the end of this extension period.

It is worth noting that many members, and the people to whom we spoke during evidence sessions, raised a number of valid concerns about some of the provisions. Although we understand the reason for the extension to September 2022—all of us are willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, given the circumstances that we are in—we do so with those reservations, specifically around the elongation of the timescale and the very restrictive nature of the regulations.

We, as a party, are happy to support the regulations, but we do so reluctantly, and we are reluctant about the method by which we are asked to do it.