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I would be happy if ministers would consider reducing the scope of the amendment to include only a relevant person acting on behalf of a community body. As I understand it, under the bill, only local authorities can decide whether to take forward the designation of a firework control zone. No one else can put the matter in front of a local authority. If Glasgow City Council decides not to designate an area as a firework control zone, the Pollokshields community—

I just want to make one point. Amendment 44 all makes sense, but subsection (4) says

“A party may lead evidence for the purpose of rebutting the presumption only if the party has given notice of the intention to do so to the other parties”.

My reading of that is that the use of the words “only if” means that if someone does not provide notice they cannot present evidence to the court. I am asking about that because in some legislation there are provisions that say that, on “cause shown”, someone can rebut again. I am happy to support the amendment, but I wanted to put that on the record.

Amendment 44 agreed to.

Section 42—Certificates as to proof of having fireworks licence

Amendment 45 moved—[Ash Regan]—and agreed to.

Section 42, as amended, agreed to.

Sections 43 and 44 agreed to.

After section 44

I have the floor; Mr Findlay can intervene.

I am sympathetic to that but I wanted some clarification. The Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 is designed to highlight the fact that an attack on an emergency worker should already be seen as a specific crime. In a sense, it is an indirect aggravation because it applies to the police, workers in hospital accident and emergency departments and ambulance workers.

I am sympathetic to the amendment because of some of the evidence that we have heard about attacks involving fireworks. Some of it is on the extreme end of the spectrum of unacceptable and violent attacks against our emergency workers. There is other legislation that can be used in prosecution, so I wanted to ask about that.

Amendment 2 is a consequence of what I am seeking to do in the next group of amendments, which relates to the days on which fireworks can be used. This amendment, which is about the days of supply of fireworks, is consequential to the amendments that relate to the days of use, so I will leave the substantive debate for the next group of amendments.

I have some sympathy with Jamie Greene’s argument about the arbitrary nature of the days on which fireworks can be sold. That needs to be clear as we approach stage 3. On the connection between the supply and the use of fireworks, my concern is that, given that part of the concept of the bill is to deal with the stress that communities feel around the times when fireworks are used, there is quite a wide range of days on which they can be used. As a consequence, amendment 2 is designed to reduce the number of days on which fireworks are supplied. I will leave my other arguments until the debate on the next group of amendments.

We received good evidence from a retailer, but it was slightly concerning when he said that he was selling fireworks for birthdays and big anniversary events. Are you concerned that there might be a growing culture of people using fireworks for big events that we have not factored into the legislation?

I guess that it would. Again, that would be for the local authority to deal with. You are saying that it would not happen that a council would not act. Why would Glasgow City Council not do that? I do not know the answer to that, but I know that, with previous legislation, councils did not act on pressured areas, whereby the right to buy could be ring fenced. We would have thought that that power would have been used in some areas of Glasgow, but it was not.

Relevant departments that are engaging with ministers may say that they are going to use the provision, but I would have thought that the decisions would be made higher up, by the full council. I do not know where the decision will be taken, but if we do not know the answer to that, we should make it clear that someone can formally ask their local authority to consider—I am not saying that it should be applied—whether a firework control zone is necessary.

I press amendment 9.

I thank Jamie Greene and Collette Stevenson for their amendments, which are critical. They all align with the committee’s stage 1 report, in which we all expressed a lot of concerns about the bill.

On Jamie Greene’s amendments 129 and 90, the biggest weakness in the bill for me is the licensing scheme and the lack of detail on it, given that a lot will be done through statutory instruments. That seems to warrant a review of the scheme.

I was concerned about the letter from the British Firework Association that Jamie Greene referred to and which we got only a couple of days ago. I presume that the minister has had the opportunity to read it, but it says:

“In respect of the licensing requirements, the Minister stated that a delivery driver would have a legal obligation to check for a licence, as they do with other age restricted products. Delivery drivers have a duty to check for age verification on age restricted products, not a licence. Notwithstanding this, the way to circumvent this (and we see already) is to send the product in plain packaging.”

It also says:

“for the record, the Minister states that Fireworks can only be delivered by specialist couriers. This is incorrect, fireworks (under ADR regulations) can be delivered in limited quantities (up to 500kg ... )”.

That alludes to the knock-on effect of people not using the licensing scheme. We do not know yet whether people will see the scheme as onerous or not, and that is where the whole debate about the black market comes in. It all ties together.

Whether the issue can be tied up at stage 3 with amendments on a review of the legislation, I do not know. For me, a specific review of the licensing scheme is important, given my concerns about whether such a scheme is the best way of controlling fireworks. I would like to hear from the minister, but I welcome and intend to vote for both pairs of amendments.

The most important point is that people should understand on which days they can use fireworks and on which days they cannot. I am less concerned about the choosing of festivals. I might need to be more informed about this, but I have attended many Eid celebrations and none involved fireworks. Personally, I did not see that that is the division that the minister is choosing. If it is, there will be more problems.

My primary concern relates to the point that the 57 days can be added to, and I agree with Jamie Greene in that regard. If ministers felt that they had to add other periods, the number of days would expand beyond 57, which would somewhat undermine the response to the concerns that the public might have about the days on which fireworks can be set off.

I know that we will have a discussion about information, but it is important that someone at home who hears fireworks going off knows whether they can lift the phone because it is an offence. We need to tie things together so that people know when they are entitled to phone the police to say, “Fireworks are going off on a day on which that is not permitted—please take action.” It is important that that is addressed so that this can work.

My biggest concern is that, if the 57 days become 67 days, we will get to a place where fireworks will be permitted for a substantial part of the year.

I would have thought that there will have been organised displays for a lot of the festivals and dates that have been mentioned. I have been to Diwali and Vaisakhi displays, and they tend to be organised. In my mind, organised displays should be encouraged for larger groups. I do not see that the bill’s purpose is to try to regulate what religious organisations or communities such as the Chinese community are doing. I do not think that that is what the bill was designed to do, and the discussion is getting a bit confusing at times. I will leave it there.

I am listening carefully to everything that you are saying. I am trying to formulate an opinion that makes sense to me, and I want to probe the issue of why we would permit members of the public to let off fireworks on 10 November. Given that bonfire night is on 5 November, does that proposal make sense? Are we not encouraging people to think, “Oh, there’s a big period when you can set off fireworks legally”? We all agree that the setting off of fireworks causes a certain nuisance to communities. I totally acknowledge your point about the need to strike a balance between reducing the negative effects and allowing people to enjoy fireworks—I am with you on that—but I think that the period when they can be used seems really long.