Chamber and committees

I will give way in a second. You are welcome to clarify, if I am wrong.

The group could put on a display by using the licence of an individual in the group, but only during the permitted periods. That is my understanding; if I am wrong, I ask the minister to correct me.

I appreciate that very helpful feedback. I know that the amendment is of a more technical nature, but I would like clarification. If a community group wants to put on a display, it still has to nominate an individual who can use their own personal licence to purchase, possess and use fireworks on its behalf. That shifts the liability, responsibility and burden entirely on to the individual in question, not the group. Does that not strike you as a bit of a problem? Why will paid-for organisations and companies that put on professional displays be exempt from the need to hold a licence while community groups that want to put on a similar display will not be? We have not really addressed the issue of how community groups that are not in a commercial environment can put on displays other than through their having to rely on the good will of individuals in the group to use their licences and make multiple purchases of what could be fairly large volumes of fireworks. Does that not defeat the whole point of the bill?

Lots of very valid questions have been raised, which in itself proves my point that the issue has not been addressed. Dropping amendment 68 will neither resolve the problem nor answer the questions that we have. There is still a lack of clarity with regard to a scenario in which a community group, charity, organisation, community council or even just a group of people in the same street wants to put on an organised display for whatever reason—perhaps not for profit—as currently happens and will be allowed to continue to happen, and how that will interact with the licensing scheme, which is, as I understand it, aimed at promoting safe behaviour by individuals and barring those whom we expect not to act safely. I understand and get all that, but what is still unclear to me is the quite odd link that is being made between a community group that wants to put on a display having to rely on an individual to use their individual licence and take on individual liability to purchase, possess, store and use fireworks on behalf of the rest of that group, and the ability of multiple individuals in a group to do the same.

Therefore, there is a perfectly feasible scenario in which 100 people in a street all use their licences to buy 5kg of fireworks and put on a 500kg firework display. That is substantial and would be perfectly legal.

I think that we are still not there with the legislation, and there are still unanswered questions, which community groups might want to be answered ahead of stage 3. Although for technical reasons my amendment 68 would probably create issues—which was not the intention—those issues could be fixed. However, I think that the Government still needs to come back to clarify the position around community groups and charities, as opposed to public displays. I do not think that that issue has been cleared up.

Thanks, Russell. It is just as well.

My sympathy for amendment 1 is based on the fact that the level of the fee sounds like a reasonable number. Putting numbers in primary legislation is difficult, dangerous and probably not sensible, but it might be a principle on which the committee can work with the Government, ahead of stage 3, to see how the Government will go about setting the fee and the work that will need to go into that. If that process were included in the bill, it might address some of the issues that members have raised. We will all work constructively on that. If Pauline McNeill is minded not to press amendment 1, we should revisit the issue.

That flows into my second point, which is the inflationary cap that we have sought to achieve in amendment 69. There are other ways of wording it—I have seen various pieces of legislation that peg increases in different ways. There are a number of disposals available to the Government for that. If the Government has a problem with the way in which we have set it out in amendment 69, we could perhaps word it in a better way. Again, the amendment can be withdrawn and we can come back to the issue. However, all of this paints a wider picture.

Amendment 90 sits in the grouping on post-legislative scrutiny, unfortunately, but it could equally sit very well in this group, as it deals with the process that the Government should set out. The policy intention surely is not to put people off getting a licence. For someone to get a licence, they go through the safety training course and get a certificate. Surely we want as many people as possible to get a licence, so anything that is prohibitive should be frowned upon by us all. Again, it is an issue that I think we could sensibly revisit.

There is a lot of sympathy in the room today. It is very nice, but nobody ever votes for my amendments. [Laughter.] Thanks anyway.

I thank the minister and members for the debate. I will clarify a few points.

I probably share other members’ concerns and reservations about the nature of what amendment 46 seeks to achieve. I have problems with how the licensing scheme is proposed, but I do not have a problem with a licensing scheme per se. Therefore, I would be unable to support amendment 46.

Can the minister elicit evidence on whether anyone has been sent to prison in the past five years, say, for a fireworks-related offence? To date, what is the maximum fine that any court has issued for such an offence?

No problem. It is important information in the context of the amendments that we are debating.

Yes, it does. Thank you for that. I am sorry for putting you on the spot, but that information is very relevant.

Is the discussion about whether the maximum fine is £5,000, £10,000 or £5 trillion not slightly irrelevant if such levels are nowhere near being reached at the moment? The fact that the data on such matters is not available to the committee is problematic, but I am guessing that the maximum fines that have been issued are in the hundreds of pounds, not in the thousands or the tens of thousands.

Regardless of whether we seek to increase the current level of fines—we will vote on that shortly—as things stand, there is no pertinent deterrent in the system. Has the Government asked why the fines that have been issued have been so low? Are such fines truly serving as any form of deterrent to the misuse of fireworks?

Here is where it is interesting. I hope that the minister takes cognisance of this. Community groups that want to put on a display will have two choices under the bill. The first choice is that, if they want to put on a display at any point in the year, they can pay a private company to do so, because such companies are exempt both from the licensing scheme, which is based on individuals, and from the provisions in the bill about permitted days of use. Therefore, if it has enough money to do so, the justice committee community group could put on a display at any point in the year by paying someone to do it. If the group does not have enough money to pay someone, it can only put on a display during the period of permitted use.