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Fireworks Safety

A little boy was squeezing my hand at the last fireworks night and saying, "Why don't they make fireworks a bit quieter?" He likes the spectacle, but he was not sure about the crashing and banging, so I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's point. We have different categories in place, but my personal preference would be to consider the noise nuisance a lot more than the light nuisance. We are happy to discuss the regulations, but we do not want to be killjoys or respond in a knee-jerk way by banning things that may carry some risk without looking closely at the evidence. In closing, let me say that I understand that this can be an emotive matter, especially when people's safety is at stake. In those circumstances, it is more important than ever that we adopt a calm, reasoned and scientific approach to our deliberations. We are only at the beginning of this debate, but I am pleased that it has been reasonably well conducted so far. As the shadow Minister for Science and Innovation, I believe that it is vital that we consider the matter carefully and on the basis of the available evidence. It would be irresponsible to make policy changes without looking at the evidence. We need to know whether the number of injuries is rising or falling. We need to know what the impact of awareness-raising campaigns is on the number of injuries. We need to know whether people are being injured at home or at the major events. We all have our instincts about that, but let us look at the figures. We also need to know the number of children and minors injured relative to the number of adults. That is just one stream of information that we need to look at. Information is power, but I have a complaint. The Government have put us in a difficult position. Bizarrely, they told officials to stop gathering the information on injuries in 2005. That was a very odd decision, and it is not good enough. Even the impact of the measures introduced in 2004 cannot be monitored adequately if the information is not available. I therefore have two requests for the Minister. First, will he make a commitment to start this year to count the number of injuries caused by fireworks? Secondly, will he give an unequivocal commitment that any changes to the regulations will be based on evidence, not merely assertion? This is not a debate with an ideological divide.