The fact is that both mainstream Political Parties in Government have failed to act to protect children from devastating injuries which lead to permanent disabilities. 610 were treated at hospital in October/November/ December last year. Hundreds more were treated by GP's for minor injuries or at home by Parents at back garden parties. Animals in their tens of thousands have been injured and killed during the 30 year lifetime of this campaign alone. Every MP for the time we have been around has had a huge mailbag on this subject. Very few MPs have taken up the issue.

Only 2 Bills have been introduced in the last 25 years. One raised the age for buying fireworks from 13 to 16 in 1975. In 1997, when this Government came in they raised the age further to 18. They wanted to do more and got support not just from us as representatives of consumers and families but from the Conservative Party, which had blocked any legislation for 18 years. Support also came from the official firework industry. But the Industry are always split on the issue and some members were briefing against the Bill with Mr Eric Forth MP & Mr Edward Leigh MP and other Tories who took a stand against their own Front Bench despite instructions from Mr William Hague. The Minister for Consumer Affairs then Nigel Griffiths had given the Bill to a Backbencher Mrs Linda Gilroy, to introduce under Private Members Legislation (secondary legislation) .

The Bill would have taken care of the period fireworks go on sale at present is a loose agreement between the companies. Furthermore, a retailer has only to pay a few pounds registration fee to sell fireworks for the full year. If they break the law and sell to under age children nothing can be done to prevent them selling fireworks again.

A National training scheme would have been introduced, and the Health & Safety Executive would have taken steps to deal with particularly dangerous firework in category 4, which had caused fatalities and serious injuries. Most importantly licensing would have been introduced something NCFS have been calling for since 1969. The licensing of firework displays. The licensing of the people who put them on, and the licensing of display fireworks.

All these things have been introduced in most other countries including in Europe, Canada the United States where they have a very powerful consumer safety body, Australia and Japan.

Because of timidity the Government have not dared to deal with out of date Victorian Firework Legislation through Primary legislation. After 6 months debate in both Houses of Parliament our Bill sailed through to its final Reading with 2 amendments from the House of Lords dealing with the cost of the training scheme. The time allotted for this was 5 hours and would have taken an hour. Mr Eric Forth, Edward Leigh and friends introduced a filibuster where a Bill can he talked out under secondary legislation. That is exactly what happened.

Tony Blair in a statement said what a pity it was that the Bill had been lost because we needed its contents, which did not exist at present. But it could only come back again via Backbencher legislation.

This was repeated once again this year by the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Dr Kim Howells who has direct responsibility for fireworks. "There was no point in meeting", he told the campaign, and the industry separately because there was nothing to discuss". But a meeting was open with his Officials if we wanted to talk about their plans for this year's safety campaign.

Noise pollution has become a big issue every year regarding fireworks. In our mailbag and on the phone we get many calls about the physical and psychological damage to most animals especially people's pets Cats & Dogs We have made representations on behalf of Horses and Animal Sanctuaries with Local Authorities and organisers of Pop Concerts were a particularly noisy firework display was planned.

Many people too are affected by the noise of fireworks and have to go away during the firework season. Once again politicians claim they are concerned by this, but the number of PQs EDMs and debates on the subject are very few.

FIREWORK INJURY STATISTICS
Last October/November for the Guy Fawkes period firework injuries treated at hospitals rose by 21% to 1056. 327 further injuries took place for the Millennium making a grand total of 1383. The first time they have gone over the 1000 mark since 1996. There was a panic then down at the DTI and in the firework industry, after 3 years of bad figures, because they knew that dangerous fireworks had been getting into the country. Of the total injured 610 children were hurt by fireworks.

Because Government Departments are cagey about giving out actual figures on serious injuries we extrapolate from the figures that 169 people were kept in hospital, and 342 had continuous treatment at outpatients. The DTI gave us a costing of œ6,000 per treatment 3 years ago, which they were required to do for a consultative exercise. It would cost much more for prolonged treatments. With fire damage we estimate the real cost of the Guy Fawkes 3-week season to be about £25m.

The Millennium Year is over but the firework industry greedy as ever for the last buck, insist that they get a second bite of the cherry in December. The stupid and weak DTI have given them another 4 weeks sales period in December, to add to the 4 week sales period in October/November. Some retailers will cock a snook at the firework industry and Government and sell fireworks right through October till New Year's Eve. They can do legitimately, once they have paid their registration fee. Our members have been calling for fireworks to be moved away from the DTI which became a business lobby for Government Departments 20 years ago.

Every year hundreds of tonnes of illegal fireworks are impounded by Customs & Excise. This has only come to light in recent years because of the efforts of the RUC to stop explosives coming into the UK Fireworks coming in here go to many different venues from private homes to garages and warehouses. At a conference of the firework industry last year that we were invited to attend for the first time the largest UK company that has taken over from "Standard Fireworks," "Black Cat" said in reply to a comment from an Essex Trading Standard Officer that one man had delivered to his home 4 tonnes of fireworks, That he could have had 20 tonnes had he so desired. This left the conference reeling. There is no limit on the amount of fireworks an individual can store but only up to 14 days. We made the point with a fire officer that nobody knew the destination of illegal fireworks therefore an individual could hold unlimited amounts of fireworks.

We also took this point up with the Minister for Consumer Affairs, Dr Kim Howells who confirmed the anomaly. He hoped that the H&S Executive could act on this. The H & S Executive did indeed begin a consultation period for a Review of the 1875 Explosives Act including Section 23 and 31, which deal with fireworks. But they are not due to make recommendations for legislation until early in 2001.

Fireworks is split between 4 Government Departments all non co-operating with each other This makes the notion of joined up Government a nonsense. The Home Office Deals with retailers. The DTI has the subject safety wise, where it is based The H& S Executive deals with the making of the Product. Customs & Excise deals with importation. As reluctant as the DTI are to bring about legislation, they should act now or give the entire subject back to the Home Office, which controlled fireworks from 1875 until 1975. According to the DTI nothing has happened to advance the cause of firework safety since we wrote our Report last October.

ENSCHEDE DISASTER
Last May there was an explosion in a Warehouse holding 100 tonnes of fireworks in Enschede in the Netherlands. Twenty people were killed and many injured and many houses were wrecked in a wide radius. Most people did not know that there was a warehouse carrying huge of fireworks at street and Town level and wondered how such a license could have been given. Others who did had approached the owner and asked him to move his high powered fireworks somewhere else.

The politicians here said that it could not happen here, but the fact is that there is no register kept by the Local Authorities of the amount of fireworks sold by companies or where they are delivered. This is a frequent complaint from the Fire Brigade who don't know what potential disasters they could be heading for.

There has been a European Standard on Fireworks, which our DTI and Firework Industry have been involved with but nobody has ever bothered to complete it. We wrote to the Government of the Netherlands, and we also wrote to the President of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi. We had a reply from the Director of Enterprise, Mr Patrick Hennessy. He said "As you know the General Product Safety Directive (92/59/EEC) applies to fireworks, as well as to many other products. This Directive requires manufacturers to ensure that the product they place on the market meet acceptable safety standards. It also requires the Member State to monitor products on the market and to inform other Member States of any problems of any problem product which can be withdrawn from the market if necessary.

"In addition CEN, the European Committee for Standardisation, is developing standards on fireworks. And while there is no specific Community Directive on fireworks, and this work is independent of any mandate given by the Commission, we are supportive of the efforts being made in this directive."

"As regards the Enschede incident the Commission regrets the loss of life involved, and awaits with interest the findings of the Netherlands authorities, which are currently carrying out an investigation".

"As regards the storage of fireworks, 1 would point out that Council Directive 96182/EC establishes control on major hazards involving dangerous substances (so called Seveso 11 Directive) Among the changes introduced with the second version of the Directive is that the manufacture and storage of pyrotechnic substances falls within the Directive, when certain threshold limits are exceeded.

However according to information received from the Netherlands Authorities, the fireworks stored in Enschede were not covered by the Directive because they were below the thresholds. 1 understand that in the light of the finding of the investigation, the Commission proposes to review the threshold quantities assigned to pyrotechnics and to propose amendments to this Directive, if appropriate. The process will be carried out in close co-operation with the Member States, the European Parliament, and other interested parties."

NCFS welcomes this move and we have made our views known to the EC that we need to expedite any legislation in view of the huge dangers that people face from high explosive fireworks coming in from the Far East and regulations should apply to all Member States so that dangerous firework cannot come in the back door from one Member State to others.