Privatised Firework Safety Campaign

EDM number 1070 in 1993-94, proposed by Nigel Griffiths on 19/04/1994.

That this House notes with concern that blinkered ideology and the privatisation of last year's firework safety campaign has contributed to a rise in the number of injuries to over 1,000, a 20 year high; notes that the Government ignored repeated warnings from safety experts and others that the privatised campaign would be a disaster; notes that when civil servants ran the safety campaign firework injuires were less than 1,000; notes that the Government gave the contract to a French company subsidiary, Euro RSCG, and doubled the budget previously administered by civil servants to ú160,000; notes that the Minister cancelled the key firework safety booklet, Safer Displays, against the advice of civil servants and to the consternation of Britain's fire chiefs; notes that the fire posters produced by Europe RSCG were so poor that fire departments refused to circulate them and that television advertisements were so ineffective that they were cancelled; calls on Euro RSCG to return the fee they received from the DTI and compensate the victims of firework injuries; requests the National Audit Office and the Committee of Public Accounts to investigate how this campaign came to be privatised and why the spending of public money was so ineffective, and to make recommendations to ensure that future firework safety campaigns are run effectively by experienced civil servants and fire safety experts; and regrets that Ministers are seeking to abolish the licensing of imported fireworks, thus putting the public at risk from potentially dangerous category 4 fireworks.

This motion has been signed by a total of 85 MPs.