Fireworks

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Thank you for fitting me in to this debate, Mr Walker. There are 171 signatures from Glasgow Central on this petition and I am glad to speak on behalf of those and other constituents. Like other hon. Members I am a big fan of public displays of fireworks. I have an ongoing dispute with my wee brother, who much prefers to use fireworks himself. He is a lot more confident with that than I am, but I am slightly older than he is and remember all the terrifying adverts on television in the ‘80s, which made me think that my hand would melt off if I touched a sparkler.

This is a serious issue in my constituency. People in Pollokshields in particular have raised concerns about fireworks being thrown in the streets. Last year Glasgow South East police reported that five under-18s were charged with possession of fireworks. That puts those young people at risk of a criminal record, so this is a serious matter. I have had many constituents contact me about the impact that fireworks have had on their daily lives. I would like to highlight and read some of those. Kate Tough said,

“Powerful fireworks are causing untold misery (and danger) to peaceful residents due to a minority of young people with no sense of safety or consideration.”

Siobhan McGurk lives on Kenmure Street and has found

“gangs of 10-20 boys running up and down the streets at night throwing fireworks at each other and at cars driving past.”

It is incredibly dangerous, not least because it is an area with tenement flats—it is a high-density area of housing. If a firework was to go up a close, that could cause untold danger for all the residents. She is also concerned that fireworks are “being used as weapons,” as other hon. Members have reported.

Other constituents in Pollokshields feel that this is just another factor of the antisocial behaviour that already exists in some communities, and the boys who are causing trouble and harassing other people in Pollokshields library use fireworks to do so at this time of year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) highlighted, this is a real danger for those young people and for the community as well. As the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said, we often cannot tell who let fireworks off or where they came from, but they cause fear and alarm to passers-by and local residents.

Heather Alexander from Thorncliffe Gardens has concerns, which others have raised as well, about the regulations being out-and-out flouted—that the law is not being enforced in any meaningful way. There are issues of police numbers and trading standards and all those kinds of things, but if the regulations are unenforceable, they are pretty meaningless. Heather Alexander mentions fireworks being set off in Queen’s Park and youngsters

“throwing them at fire service personnel”.

She also raises concerns, as hon. Members have done, about private citizens being able to buy explosives at a time when the security level is often at “severe”. It seems rather incongruous that we allow explosives to be sold over the counter with no real concern as to who buys them, where they end up and what they will do with them once they have them in their possession. There is a real concern in Pollokshields that they are being passed on to younger members of the community. It is not responsible adults who are using them; children are using them, at a range of ages.

One of the local councillors, Jon Molyneux, has been compiling some of the work on this. The police officer present at a meeting at Pollokshields Community Council advised that during firework season, police were attending on average 20 to 30 call-outs per night. They apprehended children as young as six lighting fireworks in the street. The officers were routinely targeted by fireworks being aimed at them and older relatives of children were caught being complicit in concealing the identities of the children and young people involved to the police. This is a very serious set of concerns. Children are being put in positions of danger by people who should know better. That is not being enforced in the law either.

One point that has not been raised so far is the mess that fireworks leave behind for communities to clear up. I see that right across my constituency: the remnants of fireworks lying around for weeks on end after events. I am lucky to have two large organised displays at different times of the year in my constituency: one in George Square, for which the tickets are like gold dust, and the other, a public event on bonfire night, in Glasgow Green. The residents who live around Glasgow Green, where many people go and walk their dogs and enjoy the green at all times of the year, were concerned to find the green littered with sparklers and debris long after bonfire night. A Dr Shields contacted me to say,

“as the owner of 2 dogs and someone who works using risk assessment it is currently my view that it is completely unsafe for children, pets or any sports just now due to the many hundreds of used sparklers lying on the ground.”

There is a cost to local government of clearing that up afterwards and making the park safe for everyone to use. That has not been considered much, but when these things are sold, little consideration seems to be given to where they end up. That is something the Government ought to take into consideration as well. If we are going to recycle, and look at plastic and other types of waste, we should perhaps consider what happens to fireworks after use as well and the impact that has.

[David Hanson in the Chair]

I echo the comments by many hon. Members that we need to look at this issue seriously, and we need to review the rules and licensing of these items, because it is clear to me that the situation at the moment is not adequate and it is putting young people and other residents, as well as animals, at risk.