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Fireworks Safety

I am delighted to take part in this topical debate. When it was announced, I got out my heavily annotated copy of the Fireworks Bill, of which I was a co-sponsor, along with my colleague Bill Tynan. I also used to chair the all-party group that campaigned for the legislation. I hear what the Opposition said about being terribly calm, but one reason why that group was set up was to try to face down some of the opposition to introducing the changes that we needed to tackle the serious antisocial behaviour that was associated with each 5 November. Private Member's Bills are notorious for never getting on to the statute book. We had to use a lot of tactics to get the Bill through, which involved the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who was also one of the Bill's co-sponsors, essentially having to sit on recalcitrant Opposition Back Benchers. The irony was that we set up the group to campaign on the issue shortly after my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) made one of the first attempts to bring in a private Member's Bills on the matter after the 1997 election, to which the Opposition also objected. Our aim was to try to get the legislation on to the statute book before the 400th anniversary of the gunpowder plot, and our very best chance came in 2002. Several members of the all-party group on fireworks were lucky enough to be drawn in the ballot for private Members' Bills, so we got together and said, "Right. Each and every one of us will put forward a Bill on fireworks." We went, mob-handed, to see the Minister and said, "If you don't accept the Bill introduced by Bill Tynan, who came second in the ballot, we will move on to Bill No. 5, then No. 7, No. 12 and No. 17." So the poor old Minister would have had to have spent every Friday dealing with debates on fireworks. I hope that that gives the debate a little background flavour of the tactics that we had to employ to get the changes that we wanted. I find it astonishing that anyone should suggest that the legislation went through terribly smoothly and without any opposition. In fact, the Second Reading debate was probably the most well-attended Second Reading debate of any private Member's Bill in that Session. Obviously, we again had to employ suitable tactics, so we ensured that we had well over 100 people in the Chamber at Prayers that day to show the opponents of the measures that we had the numbers to ensure that the Bill went through.