MINES AND QUARRIES BILL

HL Deb 11 November 1954 vol 189 cc1315-24

3.9 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)

My Lords, I have it in Command from Her Majesty The Queen to signify to the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Mines and Quarries Bill, has consented to place the interests of the Crown at the disposal of Parliament for the purpose of the Bill.

THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (THE EARL OF SELKIRK)

My Lords, in moving the Third Reading of this Bill, I should like to say one thing. It is this. I wish to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor, for the assistance which they have given the Government in facilitating the passage of this Bill, and particularly for the assistance they have given to my noble friend, Lord Hawke, and myself, because with a technical and very complicated Bill of this sort we know they could have caught us out at almost every stage. Far from doing that, however, they put their long and great experience in this matter fully at our disposal. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 3^a.—(The Earl of Selkirk.)

3.11 p.m.

VISCOUNT HALL

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for his kind references to myself and to my colleague, Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor. We have never regarded this as a Government Bill or one which would arouse much controversy, because it is really an excellent Bill, as I shall say later in my speech. The Third Reading of this measure in this, your Lordships' House, almost completes what I consider a gigantic task. For this Bill is a very important Bill. It is a large document of no fewer than 195 clauses and covering 134 pages. Its consideration has occupied a considerable amount of Parliamentary time, after a long period of preparation by the Minister, his Department and the draftsmen, to all of whom must be given great credit.

It is a good Bill, for it endeavours to deal with all the causes of mining accidents. It is based upon the pooling not only of the knowledge of experts, whose ideas have been sound, but also of the experience of many practical men who have spent many years of their working lives in the coal mining industry of this country. Also it is strongly supported by the National Union of Mineworkers. As I said, we do not regard it as a Government Bill but one which a united Parliament is presenting to the nation for the benefit of the mining industry, as a charter for the safety and the welfare of the miners. It is the result of our Parliamentary system at its best, and I am sure that it will be of the greatest value to mining communities when it is in operation.

It can be said that I and my noble friends Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor and Lord Lawson have a vested interest in this legislation, for we cannot forget our close association with pits and pitmen, with whom we have lived almost all our lives and whose outlook we share. I and my noble friends are pleased to know that, with others, we have taken just a small part in assisting the passage of this Bill through your Lordships' House and have thereby assisted to make what I hope will be history in the mining industry. We hope that this Bill will be as successful as was the 1911 Act. I commenced to work, as did my noble friend Lord Lawson, twenty years before the 1911 Act came into operation. We saw the conditions then prevailing in the mining industry; and they were deplorable. When the manpower in the pits was no higher than it is today, the average number of fatal accidents each year was from 1,100 to 1,200, and serious accidents numbered between 5,000 and 6,000.

A good deal of improvement has taken place since that time. We are not now having, thank God! a recurrence of the heavy explosions which we had in the old days. Within a year of my commencing work a colliery within four miles of my home was blown up by an explosion, and no fewer than 250 miners were killed. Some time later, within only three miles, at the Albion Colliery at Senghenydd, there was another explosion. The loss of life at that colliery was larger than that in any colliery explosion in this country—no fewer than 420 men lost their lives at one stroke. I felt very sad at that time, because amongst that number was my old "butty" as we called him, with whom I commenced work as a boy. He used to call at my house every morning at six o'clock; he got me by the hand, took me to the working place, and he delivered me home safely between five and six o'clock at night. I hope that the days of such disasters are past. We cannot prevent accidents in the mines, but the work which has been carried out during the past twenty years, and particularly during the course of the last ten years, has greatly minimised them. In 1938 there were 858 fatal accidents; last year the number was 392—a great reduction; but it is still far too many. Of reportable serious accidents there were 3,150 in 1938 and 1,900 last year. What is rather surprising is that from 1938 to the present time accidents which disable men for more than three days (those are regarded as less serious accidents) have increased in number by over 100,000. I cannot account for that. I have asked questions of some mining men as to the reason for it and they attribute it largely to the introduction of machinery.

The figures which I have given indicate the improvement to which I have referred, and the progress which has been made. But it is significant that, even when all that has been done, one out of every three persons employed in the coal mines of this country meets with an accident which disables him for more than three days. Naturally, this causes great suffering and great loss. I read the first Report of the National Coal Board, which stated that workmen's compensation for injuries in the coal mines ran to something like £10 million a year—and that figure is negligible compared with the suffering which these accidents cause. But they also cause a loss of production, because, taking the average accident as involving six days away from work, that means a loss of something like 1½ million tons of coal during the year. We are hoping that this Bill will reduce, as I think it will, the number of these accidents. It requires the closest co- operation between officials and workmen but, given that co-operation, I am sure that we shall have the results which we expect. I will say no more about the Bill, except that, so far as I know, nearly every aspect of the cause of danger has been covered in one way or another. It is impossible to prevent all colliery accidents—that will be impossible, as long as we have coal mining. But I should like to tell the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, the Government and the Minister that South Wales is most happy about the effort which will be made, when this Bill comes into operation, to deal with this horrible dust problem. As noble Lords will know, about two-thirds of the people who suffer from silicosis and pneumoconiosis come from South Wales. We are hoping that the provisions in this Bill will prove a deterrent to that disease.

I wish to make two final points. First, we all know that before legislation can be operated regulations have to be made. I hope those regulations will not be too long delayed. It will be a tremendous job for the Department, but neither the purpose of the Bill nor the benefits it confers will be attained until the regulations are in operation. When the regulations are laid on the Table of Parliament I trust sufficient time will be allowed for their consideration. Secondly, a very important point, I should like to know what is happening over the difficulties which have arisen in relation to the inspectorate. During the discussions in another place, and indeed in your Lordships' House, attention was drawn to the inadequacy of the miners' inspectorate. Complaints were made that the type of person presenting himself is not of the right kind. There was a suspicion that the difficulty was not with the Minister nor with the Coal Board but with the Treasury, and the Minister on the Third Reading of the Bill in another place said he was then discussing the matter with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

May I say how pleased I am that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, is associating himself with this Bill, by speaking on Third Reading? It will be greatly appreciated. Finally let me, as one whose long life has been closely linked with the coal industry and the mining community, pay a great tribute to everyone who has had a part in the preparation and passing of this legislation—the Minister, his Department, the inspec- torate, the National Coal Board and the Members of both Houses. This is a new charter of safety which, if properly administered, should save thousands of lives which would otherwise be lost, and it will assuredly prevent great suffering from accidents which now occur. It may be the means of making work in the coal mines more attractive than it is at present. But it cannot be too strongly emphasised that the success of this legislation depends entirely upon the day-to-day application of the regulations by those whose duty that will be—the Coal Board, a sufficient and highly efficient inspectorate (who in my experience have always done an excellent job of work), the colliery managers and their officials and all the workmen, whatever job they are called upon to do in the pits. If the close co-operation which has existed between all who have contributed to bring this Bill to this stage can be passed on to those who will have the responsibility for its administration in the pits, then assuredly deaths from accidents will be greatly reduced and a new era of safety will be established in the coal mines of this country. I commend this Bill to all my comrades and colleagues who are employed in the mining industry of this country.

3.27 p.m.

LORD LAWSON

My Lords, I have been extremely sorry that I could not play any part during the proceedings of this Bill so far, as I was otherwise engaged; but I should like to join with my noble friend, Lord Hall, in welcoming the passing of the Bill and paying a tribute to the Minister who is responsible for it and whom I knew in another place when he came there as quite a young man. Even then he gave a good deal of his attention to this problem. I would also thank the noble Earl who has piloted the Bill through this House. My noble friend, Lord Hall, has said almost all that can be said. The passing of the Third Reading of a Bill of this kind is an historic occasion. We remember, as Lord Hall said, that we had both been working for twenty years in the mines at the time when the 1911 Bill was passed. That gave power mainly to make regulations. I remember after my day's work, reading what were then called the Reports of the Grand Committee of the House on that measure, which was piloted through by the present Prime Minister.

But I remember much more clearly the conditions which existed when that Bill went through in 1911. My noble friend, Lord Hall has mentioned one of them. There was a mine explosion at Senghenydd in 1913. That was the peak of several years of mine explosions in this country. The miner as a rule is not very much disturbed over accidents; he steels himself to such things. He will, of course, feel sorry for his own comrades in the mine, but he will not get unduly rattled. I noticed, however, that during this period, when from 1905 to 1913 there were five of the greatest explosions ever to have taken place in this country (these were at Maypole, Hulton, Whitehaven, West Stanley and then Senghenydd), there was a profound effect not only upon the miners but upon the people of this country generally. I have sometimes said that the happenings over those five years, the tremendous impression they made and the waves of emotion which followed throughout the country, did more to influence the country towards the formation of a new Party than all the talking which some of us were then doing.

I have read the history of mining developments in the reports that have been issued from time to time, covering almost the last hundred years, and one of the things which surprises me is that in the last hundred years there have been just one hundred explosions in which more than ten lives were lost in the mines. All through those reports this fact is revealed: the difficulty there was of apprehending that ventilation was the real root of the cure of most of those great disasters. I was rather shocked to find that in the first thirty or forty years of the nineteenth century it was just a toss up whether we were going to be able to work the deep seams or not, until Sir Humphrey Davy was brought in with his lamp. They had tried all kinds of means to deal with the deeper seams. In fact, Buddle, the great mining engineer of the north, who first brought Sir Humphey Davy down to see what was happening there, goes so far as to say that they had tried decayed fish—phosphorus—at one time in the mines. It is a really dramatic story.

I make these remarks because the one thing I like about this Bill is the emphasis placed upon ventilation as well as upon coal dust. I see from Clauses 23 to 28 that there has to be a road through the workings from one shaft to another, and that it has to be not less than five feet high and at least four feet wide. That is a very great improvement, because I am sure my colleagues here would agree with the general dictum in some of the mines I have worked in—the deep mines—that "a rat could not get through the return." The returns were treated as rather negligible. It was not because the people concerned in the mines were thoughtless or heartless; they just had not the capital to improve things and they had not the same facilities for working ventilation as we have under the system of unified mining. I must say to your Lordships that this Bill, as it is today, with its assurance of ridding us of great disasters—not an absolute assurance, for nobody who knows mines would speak of an absolute assurance, but at any rate the hope of greater absence from disasters—would have been quite impossible if there had not been the unifying of the mines through national ownership. I notice now, for instance, all round my own county, that old mines that were almost forgotten and around which walls had been built are being used as an asset and an aid to ventilation, for the simple reason that there are now no barriers between ownership and no difficulty in making roads through those older mine shafts.

Incidentally, I may say that where the requirements regarding ventilation cannot exactly be met owing to some difficulty, it is usual for the Minister and the inspector to have power to make concessions and to say that the conditions shall be waived for the time being. That is necessary; anyone who knows pit work knows that that is so. I hope, however, that both Ministers and inspectors will be very careful and give a good deal of thought before they give consent to the waiving of those conditions. I am pleased to see the clauses that deal with dust, because dust is a terrible thing. Your Lordships may be surprised to know that it was only at about the time when the Senghenydd and Stanley mines and the rest of them were dealt with that it really dawned upon those concerned that coal dust could make an explosion without a light. It is an astonishing thing that throughout all the reports one reads, one finds that right through the nineteenth century the one thing the investigators were looking for was where the light started. It was only at the turn of the twentieth century that they realised that there could be what is known as a spontaneous coal dust explosion. Those who have been in the vicinity of a great fall in a mine will know of that danger. You get the enclosed space; a great area of roof falls; it reverses the air; it has the effect as though it lifted one up and suspended one in the air. Inside that small circle, in the enclosed space, all the coal dust is vibrating and is gradually scrubbing together the particles so that they make the light. It took people a long time to find that out, and that is where we in Great Britain have had to pay a big price for much of the experience in mining throughout the world. That we have done.

This is an historic day for mining in this country. I hope that the wishes that my colleague and the Minister have already expressed will be realised. There is nothing, I think, which would help more to increase the number of men and boys who want to go into the mines than the assurance that there is an absence of accidents and of disasters. It may be that this Bill, with its ventilation clauses and its dust clauses, will make a contribution to the working of deep seams, because as time goes on our destiny is going to depend on seams that, in the main, are deeper than most of the seams which are being worked now. I am sure that the only factor that tells is great knowledge and the assurance upon ventilation, which will enable us to work the, deep seams, which may be, in the coalfields which are as yet almost unexplored, 4,000 and 5,000 feet deep—much deeper than the present ones. So I give my thanks for this Bill, and hope that our good wishes are realised in the future as the result of its passing.

3.39 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, if I rise to say a few brief but very wholehearted words at this stage, I can assure your Lordships that I do so from no desire to usurp the functions of the noble Lords, Lord Selkirk and Lord Hall, on whom the main burden of conducting this Bill has fallen. But it seems fitting that on this particular Bill the Leader of the House should say a word of warm congratulation to all those concerned in the Bill on the completion of their labour. After all, it is a very important measure—as Lord Lawson said, an historic measure; and it deals with a very important section of the community.

I suppose there is no body of men in the long industrial history of this country to whom the country has owed more than those who work in the mines and in the quarries. Their work, as we know, is always strenuous, and often extremely dangerous, in more ways than one, as we have been told this afternoon in the impressive speeches from the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, and the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, to which we have just listened. And yet year after year they have continued to produce the fuel and the other materials for the industries and the private citizens of our land on which we all so greatly depend. That being so I feel that it behoves us, who represent the community in this House of Parliament, to ensure that the conditions under which miners work are as safe and as healthy as they can be made. That, of course, is the purpose of this Bill. It brings up to date, and, we all hope, improves, past enactments on this subject.

Inevitably, covering the wide ground that it does, it is an extremely bulky document; and it incorporates, as your Lordships know, the results of an immense amount of work. It has 195 clauses and five Schedules; and it is for that reason, in particular, that I feel it is the more remarkable and the more satisfactory that the Bill has had so rapid and so smooth a passage. I do not say that there has been absolute agreement on every single point but I believe that it would be absolutely true to say—as the noble Viscount, Lord Hall has already said—that there has been no Party disagreement. He, I think, said that he had not regarded this as a Government Bill. Indeed, the vast majority of the Amendments with which we have been concerned here have been non-controversial and of a purely technical character, designed only to improve the efficiency of the Bill in the light of the discussions which have taken place here and in another place. That that is true is, I think, clear from the fact that although we have had 406 Amendments there were no Divisions on the Committee stage and only one Division on the Report stage.

Moreover, this Bill has passed through the House at a speed which I imagine must have been almost a record, even for such an efficient body as your Lordships' House. That is a tribute, not only to the Parliamentary ability and the conciliatory attitude of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, who have been responsible for it, but also, if I may say so, to the helpfulness and co-operation of the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor, who led the Labour Party—I will not on this occasion say "the Opposition." Those noble Lords, whom the House so greatly respects, have given your Lordships, upon this Bill, the benefit of a lifetime's experience, which we could not have had had they not been willing to assist us; and we are all most grateful to them. No doubt, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, said just now, owing to the immense complexity of the Bill, some little time is likely to elapse before the provisions are fully digested and applied by those concerned with the working of mines and quarries. But I can say to the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, who asked a question on this subject, that it is the full intention of the Government that, so far as it is praticable, these provisions should be brought into full operation as soon as possible. We greatly hope that that will be achieved within twelve months. I do not know whether I am being too optimistic, but I understand that that is the intention.

The noble Viscount also asked a question regarding the shortage of inspectors, which is, of course, a very important matter. I cannot say very much to him to-day, but I will say this. I understand that the position is that with a present staff of 151, some 30 posts remain vacant, and we are hoping very much that the renewed efforts of recruitment which are being made, aided by a substantial improvement in initial salary scales, will be successful in reducing the shortage. At any rate, in all these ways, I entirely agree with noble Lords opposite that the greatest speed that is possible must be used. We in Parliament, at any rate, have done our part; and I think we can this afternoon register our sincere satisfaction that so beneficial a measure as this has passed through your Lordships' House with the agreement of all Parties and is well on the way to the Statute Book.

On Question, Bill read 3^a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.