Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Official Report 572KB pdf

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Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022

Our next item of business is consideration of follow-up correspondence received from the Minister for Victims and Community Safety after we considered the issue of police searches for pyrotechnic devices outside football matches and other events. I refer members to paper 3. I again open up the discussion to members and ask if you have any issues or comments that you want to make on the letter that we received.

The minister gave evidence a few days after a particular football match at Hampden at which scores of people had pyrotechnics in the ground and the kick-off was delayed. My line of questioning was on why the existing legislation could not have dealt with that. The letter confirms what we knew, which is that it can, it could and it should have been able to do so.

I put on the record that the new legislation does not appear to be needed to deal with the particular problem of pyrotechnics at football grounds, unless I am completely misunderstanding something. It is worth putting that out there.

Okay; we can come back to that.

I have a couple of points. First, following on from Russell Findlay’s valid question of the Government, does the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022 give any new powers? The understanding was that it was mostly in relation to the ability to stop and search, not necessarily around possession, which in certain environments, as Russell Findlay said, is already illegal.

It is a bit unclear what will happen with the act versus existing legislation, and what training and communication Police Scotland is involved with for officers on the ground at big events—I talking about not only football events, but also other sporting or music events. In fact, I was watching some footage of a music festival, which will remain unnamed, where lots of people in the audience were flying flares with smoke coming out of them, making a complete mockery of the fact that this committee spent a year working on a bill to stop that happening. Needless to say, they were not rioting—they were all having a good time. That is by the by, however.

10:45  

I am grateful for the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s response. In part, she was responding to some specific questions that I posed in the session on 3 May, and I want to query two things in the letter. The first is in relation to someone who is stopped under suspicion of committing an offence under the new act. The letter states that if a prohibited item is found,

“it will be seized and retained”,

which makes complete sense. The letter goes on to state:

“The individual will most likely be taken into police custody”,

which is intriguing, as that is not the evidence that we took from Police Scotland. If that is the case, I would find it interesting.

The letter also says that it is the case that,

“if released without charge under ‘investigative liberation’, an individual may be given certain rules to follow (such as telling the person not to go to a certain place or speak to certain people) for a set period of time.”

I am quite intrigued by that. After somebody has been liberated, who has not been charged—the letter clearly states, “without charge”—can they be given specific instruction not to attend certain places or meet certain groups of people? In a scenario where someone has been stopped outside a football game, an item has been removed, and the person has then been released without charge—perhaps even on the spot but pending further investigation—do the police have a power to remove that person or to say to that person that they must remove themselves from the vicinity of the stadium? It is a bit unclear how that would work in practice. The letter seems to fall back on the admissibility of that individual being the responsibility of the event organiser or the venue.

The second query is about the lifetime ban orders, which is a point that I raised. It seems that a loophole still exists here. My original question was whether lifetime ban orders could be an effective additional tool when somebody is stopped and found to be in possession of illegal articles under the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022. It seems to be that the person can be given a football banning order, which can be quite lengthy, only if they are also in breach of the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006, which specifically says that they must be

“engaging in violence or disorder”.

However, being caught with fireworks and flares at a football match does not necessarily mean “violence and disorder” if the person has not used them, for example.

The threshold for the introduction of FBOs is extremely high at the moment, so it seems to me that the 2022 act will have to be altered to reduce it. Will the Government consider doing so? For example, someone could be a repeat offender—turning up with flares, maybe even having been barred from the venue or stadium—but they would not be given a lifetime banning order in the current scenario, so there is certainly room for improvement. Could the Government respond on that point?

Nobody else wants to come in.

Russell Findlay and Jamie Greene have both made a lot of reasonable points. The letter sets out the current position around legislation, which, in the context of this discussion around pyrotechnics, has perhaps one or two gaps.

I was pleased to read that the minister, along with officials, is having

“further discussions with Police Scotland, football clubs and authorities, and other ... stakeholders, about the effectiveness of FBOs.”

The point that you made latterly, Jamie, around the course of conduct, is key. We may be able to ask about that, but it is my understanding that a course of conduct would be anticipated before an order would be placed on someone. That is a practical issue at the moment. A lifelong ban would apply if a series of incidents—a course of conduct—indicated that a person was not desisting from their behaviour but continued taking pyrotechnics into a ground.

We have noted the points that have been raised. If the committee is in agreement, we can put those further questions to the minister.

Members: indicated agreement.