Captain FABERasked the Home Secretary if he can state whether, in face of the various colliery accidents that occur, he will consider the advisability of enforcing an increased number of exit shafts in all mines, which would afford increased facilities of escape, and also by improving ventilation lessen the chances of explosion?
§ Mr. CHURCHILLI am informed by my expert advisers that it would not be possible to lay down any such general rule as the hon. Member suggests, nor would it necessarily produce the results which he contemplates. In some cases the rule would be impracticable on physical grounds—as at Whitehaven, where the workings are under the sea at a distance of three to four miles from the land—and in other cases, which would be numerous, on account of the heavy cost of sinking the shafts, which would make it impossible to carry on the mine. The utility of an additional shaft or shafts, as providing increased facilities of escape, would depend 577W on their position with regard to the workings, and this would be continually altering, as the workings retreated in one direction or advanced in another. I am advised, moreover, that in none of the disasters of the last two or three years, except Whitehaven, would lives have been saved had there been a shaft near to the workings. As regards ventilation, the difficulties that have to be met have to do, not so much with the quantity of air introduced into the mine, as with the proper disposition of the air so as to bring it to the face. There are other and more satisfactory ways of meeting these difficulties than by the provision of additional shafts. The question of the ventilation of mines has been considered by the Royal Commission on Mines, and I am proposing to give effect to their recommendations in the amending Bill, which is now in preparation.