Fireworks: Public Sales

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, and to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris).

When the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) started her speech, she made a throwaway remark about how, when we think about fireworks, we might look back to our childhoods. I do not look back to my childhood when thinking about fireworks, because the displays I attended were absolutely awful.

I have three reasons for not looking back to those firework displays with much enthusiasm. First, I do not think much of Guy Fawkes night. Why we celebrate the burning of a Catholic on that occasion is bizarre. Why we go to the effort of throwing the guy on the fire and letting off fireworks in celebration of it seems strange. Secondly, enormous effort is put into letting off fireworks and, frankly, I found that effort too much when I had smaller children and was a child myself. Thirdly, for many years, until she died, I had a Labrador as a pet. We, too, had to take measures to ensure that she was out of the way when firework displays took place.

I do, however, like some displays. Almost every year on new year’s eve, I come to the House of Commons, partly for the sociability of the occasion, but also to see the Eye firework display across the Thames, which is spectacular. We can look at the displays that take place in other parts of the world—Sydney, for example—but the display put on from the Eye by the London authorities shows this city as the brilliant city that it really is. I enjoy that myself, and bringing friends and family.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a rather curmudgeonly speech about fireworks, if he does not mind me saying so. I understand the point he makes about the huge display here in London, but a great deal of enjoyment is found by many different people in smaller displays in their local communities. My children greatly enjoy going to our back window to see the displays over Chesterfield, such as on fireworks night. Smaller displays can be tremendously enjoyable, but we are all concerned about those people who use them irresponsibly or cause danger. They are the ones we want to clamp down on.

[John Howell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I will try to be less curmudgeonly. I did not intend to sound like that, and am sorry it came across that way.

I was introduced to this subject by my local paper, the Henley Standard, which before Guy Fawkes this year ran a campaign, Ban the Bangs. I fully support it, though I had some observations to make about it. The people who participated in the campaign were principally pet owners—dog and cat owners—and one said that she and her dog “tremble uncontrollably” and “are very, very upset”. It is important to bear that in mind.

The campaign was trying to push people to go to organised displays. Despite comments that have been made, in my constituency such displays are organised not just by the district and county councils but by individual parish councils—I will come on to say something about that—which are good displays organised by the parish councillors themselves.

I was struck by something said by one of the participants in the campaign:

“I don’t want to spoil people’s fun but why are they so loud?”

That is an important point: we do not want to spoil people’s fun, but why are fireworks so loud?

The hon. Member for Warrington North referred to silent fireworks in response to my intervention. I appreciate that they are not entirely silent, but they are a lot more so and they could play a part in dealing with the situation, although they do not take away the whole problem. They take away the noise problem and the argument about fireworks being very loud, but they do not take away the problem of flashes, which often cause the most distress to animals. Many animals can cope with the increased noise—they cope with things such as traffic backfiring all the time—but they cannot cope with the sudden flashes. Although silent fireworks have their role to play, they do not answer the whole question.

There is a tremendous amount in the idea of us working together to provide organised displays for people to go to. The parish council of the village that I used live in was a little like Ipswich, I think, in that it organised a display each year on the green, which the whole village came to. It was always well organised. I cannot recall in the 20-odd years that I lived there ever seeing an accident there, and it was a good illustration of what can be achieved.

I understand the need for the campaign, but—perhaps I am being curmudgeonly again—we ought to push for intelligence, common sense and courtesy to rule, three of the rarest elements in the universe. We should push for intelligence on how to use fireworks, common sense in how to organise an event, and courtesy, which the hon. Member for Nottingham North spoke of, to tell people when we are planning to have a display. The Government have some public awareness: they produce “Celebrating with bonfires and fireworks: a community guide.” It is time that that was updated to take into account the sort of activities organised by councils, so that they would be as safe as they could be.

I return to where I started: I like the big firework displays—I love the one in London—but, quite honestly, if I had to give up one for the other, I would happily give up the individual displays and go for the big displays that have all the razzmatazz I am looking for. Every new year, I stand open mouthed watching the display at the London Eye. It adds quite a lot to this city.