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Fireworks Safety

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I had my researcher on the internet yesterday to find out just how easy it was to buy fireworks. It is extremely easy, so the Minister might like to look at that and deal with the issue in his response. Non-specialist retailers are able to sell fireworks only for a prescribed period. The Government's Firework Regulations 2004, built on the 1997 regulations, placed a curfew on the use of fireworks from 11 pm to 7 am in "peacetime", from midnight on 5 November and from l am on new year's eve and for Diwali, the Chinese new year and other celebrations mentioned earlier in the debate. Anecdotally, I would say that the number of complaints I have received have diminished over the past few years. However, there are issues that the Government should tackle. Safety has been a big concern in the past. It is impossible to comment at the moment on how many people are injured because, as the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) said, the Government stopped collecting the statistics in 2005. That is not very helpful. We understand that the figure stabilised at around 1,000, but the then Department of Trade and Industry seems to have taken the view that it was unlikely to change either through safety awareness or further regulation. To buy category 4 fireworks, I understand that people need to say only that they are a professional firework display operator. No proof is required, and there is no requirement for a licence, although some of the worst accidents have taken place in events, involving thousands of people, that were stage-managed by unlicensed operators who, potentially, had carte blanche to cause mayhem. I would thus ask the Minister to consider introducing some professional licensing requirement for public firework display operators. My second main area of concern, which several hon. Members have already mentioned, is that of pets. I am not talking about acts of gratuitous cruelty, although they demean us as a society. I am not even talking about the 4,500 pets a year who wind up being treated by vets for injury. It is incumbent on responsible owners to keep pets inside during the firework season, although I acknowledge the point about unexpected fireworks going off outside the approved curfew time. What I am talking about is the noise factor, which can distress millions of pets at this time of year. I believe that the 120 dB limit is too high for many pets to tolerate and causes a disproportionate amount of suffering. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has run a campaign called "Keep the noise down" and it wants to see the limit reduced from 120 dB to 97 dB—a reduction that would have a marked impact, so I would be grateful if the Minister said whether the Government would at least look at that proposition.