§ 44. Mr. TINKERasked the Secretary for Mines, seeing that the explosions in mines and deaths through them were greater in 1930 than in the two previous years, whether he can say if the inquiries made into the causes found that any of the explosions were caused through inadequate ventilation?
§ Mr. SHINWELLInquiries were made by His Majesty's inspectors into the causes of every one of these explosions. In two of them the ventilation was proved to have been inadequate through negligence on the part of the management, and those responsible were prosecuted and convicted of offences under the Coal Mines Act. In the other cases, although at the moment of the explosion and in the immediate neighbourhood of the source of ignition a dangerous concentration of fire-damp must have existed, there was no proof that the ventilation was inadequate through negligence and not through an accident or other causes against which it was impracticable to make provision.