§ MR. NANNETTI (Dublin, College Green)To ask the Secretary to the Board 852 of Trade, is he aware that the regulations to prevent the use of naked lights and the use of matches and prohibition of tobacco smoking, for the prevention of fire and the protection of property from fire on the Liverpool Dock Estate, are being broken with the knowledge of the local police and other authorities by the workmen imported to take the place of local workmen in the Toxteth Dock; and, seeing that the imported workmen under the protection of the local police are daily and nightly allowed to smoke in the sheds where cargo of an inflammable nature is being stored and handled by the imported workmen, will he take the necessary measures in the interest of property and public safety to prevent an outbreak of fire.
(Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) I have been in communication with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, who inform me that the workmen in question were taken to the Harrington, not the Toxteth, Dock, and that the firm to whom that dock is appropriated were duly informed by the harbour master that the ordinary regulations as regards smoking must be observed, although he had given permission for the use of two small cooking stoves which have been placed in approved positions and are properly watched. There is no inflammable or other cargo in the shed where the men are located. The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board state that it is very difficult to prevent all smoking when bodies of men are temporarily located on their estate, but that the sheds occupied by them are not on such occasions used as either transit sheds or warehouses, smoking amongst men when handling cargo being absolutely unheard of. They assure me that they and the police are fully alive to the necessity of protecting property on their estate from fire, and that they are doing, and will do, all that is necessary with this object.