HC Deb 15 April 1919 vol 114 cc2705-6
31. Mr. CASEY

asked the Home Secretary whether mines inspectors or other competent persons are authorised to examine and report to the Home Office on the efficiency or otherwise of all colliery visual signal indicators; and, if so, whether he can say if such indicators correctly record the signals to give confidence to the winding engineman in complying with the signal registered?

Mr. SHORTT

No. 95 of the General Regulations under the Coal Mines Act, 1911, requires the provision of effective visual indicators. The mines inspectors have power to examine these appliances, and it is their duty to enforce the Regulation, and the matter is one to which they have been, and are, giving special attention. There are several types of efficient indicators which have been installed at a large number of mines. During the War some difficulty was experienced in getting a supply, but this is now disappearing, and a circular is about to be issued from the Home Office to colliery owners and managements to call their attention to the necessity of a full and immediate compliance with the Regulation.

32. Mr. CASEY

asked the Home Secretary whether mines inspectors or other competent persons are authorised to examine and report to the Home Office if overwinding machinery at collieries is in satisfactory working order, so as to prevent overwinding accidents; and, if so, what is the period between one inspection and another?

Mr. SHORTT

The manager of the mine is required, under Section 66 of the Coal Mines Act, to appoint a competent person, whose duty it is to examine thoroughly the machinery in actual use for winding persons at least once in every twenty-four hours, and to make a full and accurate report of the result of the examination; and the Section provides that these reports shall be recorded without delay in a book kept at the mine for the purpose and accessible to the workmen. It is the duty of the mines inspectors, in the course of their inspections, to check the observance of these requirements, and they frequently examine and report on the overwinding appliances.

Mr. STANTON

Has the right hon. Gentleman any information to give us as to encouraging inventors of safety appliances for overwinding?

Mr. SHORTT

I should require notice of that question.