Gleision Mine

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Chope, to serve under your chairmanship.

On Thursday 15 September 2011, seven men left their homes and commuted to work at the Gleision pit in my constituency. Having drunk their morning tea, they moved underground just after 9 o’clock to labour on the number two Rhondda seam. Wearing high-visibility jackets and safety gear, they expected to work until 5 o’clock and then return to their families. Instead, at 9.45 am, a small explosion that they detonated led to the release in a matter of seconds of 3,000 tonnes of water into a shaft hardly 4 feet high. The exact sequence of events is unknown, but the mine manager, Malcolm Fyfield, was close to the inrush. Astonishingly, he was able to survive the torrent of water and climb through the breach hole, finally to emerge bloodied, having struggled out of another entrance to the mine.

Further from the breach, David Wyatt heard the roar from the coming torrent and ran until he was able to jump on a conveyor belt, which carried him to the main mine entrance, the water chasing him through the passage. There, he alerted his colleague, Nigel Evans, and the emergency services were called. Daniel Powell, another collier in the mine, was also lucky to escape after running from the inrush. Those three were the only men to survive. Charles Breslin, Philip Hill, Garry Jenkins and David Powell were crushed by the terrifying raging force of the flood. With nearly a century of mining experience between them, those colliers had laboured in mines across the Swansea, Neath and Dulais valleys all their working lives. Charles Breslin had returned from retirement for a stint down Gleision to earn extra money to complete the family home he was building.

In the hours immediately after the explosion, teams from across Britain came to the fore as emergency services from Dinas, Cwmgwrach, Glynneath and even Yorkshire rushed to help in a frantic rescue operation and the subsequent investigation. Down the mountain in Rhos community centre, the families of the trapped men gathered with community leaders in a 36-hour vigil until the miners’ bodies were eventually recovered and gradually identified, and everyone began to come to terms with the trauma, and the families with their stunned grief. Today, over three years on, we are no closer to being told by any of the key agencies or the justice system why Charles, David, Philip and Garry died.

This is not an exercise in finding someone to blame. There was a trial and the manager and mine owners were acquitted of manslaughter and corporate manslaughter respectively. Mining is inherently dangerous, but neither I nor the families who were present during the long hours of that sad vigil in Rhos community centre have been given answers as to why the accident occurred by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Health and Safety Executive or indeed the trial at Swansea county court earlier this year. I am therefore left to make my own judgment after careful assessment of the trial evidence and other inquiries.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on bringing this matter to Westminster Hall. Can he say what happened at the inquest? Unfortunately, I have been involved with deaths in the mining industry all my life, and normally there is some indication from an inquest of how an individual died.

[Mr Hain]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority as a former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. The coroner’s inquest was convened and then adjourned, and has never been completed, which has left unanswered questions.

The Gleision tragedy was a chilling reminder of a death-strewn mining era long thought consigned to history, and of the fact that short-cut attitudes to health and safety can be fatal. It also revealed how erosion of the Mines Rescue Service could create greater tragedies in the future if we fail to address the formidable budget challenges that that key agency faces if it is to maintain its long and dedicated record on mining.

The first lesson is that employers must be responsible for their employees in a way that was obviously not the case at Gleision. Throughout its recent life, it seems there was illegal mining at Gleision, certainly in the decade prior to 2011. At the trial, Mr Justice Wyn Williams said that successive managers had read into health and safety regulations what suited their needs, failing to co-operate sufficiently with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of mines. Despite this, the mines inspectors confirmed that the mine plan from which the manager and the four men were working, even as they detonated that fatal blast, was accurate. The inspectors checked during the official investigation after the tragedy and found that, although Gleision had not been inspected in the 16 months prior to the accident—an attempt to do so had been foiled by bad weather—the survey conducted two months before in July 2011 by mines surveyor John Brosnan was up to date and sufficiently accurate.

Of course, the Management and Administration of Safety and Health at Mines Regulations 1993 made it incumbent on the mine manager or owner to inform the mines inspectorate of any major changes in working plans underground. The inspectorate relies on the mutual co-operation of the mine manager and mine owner to alert to changes in the faces that they seam, and it is more than likely that multiple Gleision managers before Malcolm Fyfield had failed to do that adequately and properly.

The entire legal framework of health and safety at work in Britain is sensibly based on a self-policing model, relying on companies and their executives to comply with and guarantee safety standards by keeping risk as low as reasonably practicable. It is clear to me that in the events leading up to the tragedy the regulations were not complied with. However, the most frustrating question, and the one that haunts us all, is: why were the four miners there facing death in the first place?

The day after the tragedy, having been escorted from Rhos community centre up the mountain to stand at the mine entrance amid rescue workers and police, the mines inspector showed me the same mine plan from which Fyfield and the men were working. It showed clearly that they were mining directly towards an area in the old mine workings marked “Old Central Workings and Underground Water”. I have the mine plan here. The mines inspector expressed his surprise at this, and there is still no explanation for why the decision to take that risk was made.

The exact source of the water—whether it was in the area marked on the plan I saw, only a few metres from where the men fatefully detonated their explosion, or somewhere else nearby—was hotly disputed during the trial. The fact remains that the water was indeed there, exactly as marked on the mine plan, and that it killed them. Mines inspectors investigating the accident afterwards confirmed that its presence coincided with markings on the plan I saw. Indeed, they were able to see the high tide mark previously reached by the water that subsequently raged torrentially through the breach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

What the inspectors will be able to do is set out the evidence they got from the site investigation. They cannot revisit questions that were dealt with at the trial.

[Ian Lavery]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Harper]

Let me just reply to the right hon. Gentleman, because it is his debate, and then of course I shall listen to the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The inspectors cannot rerun the trial and, in effect, re-answer the question that was dealt with at the trial and come up with either the same or a different answer. That is not possible. I listened to what the right hon. Gentleman said. I am sure the inspectors will endeavour to ensure that they go as far as they can in setting out the evidence—the facts that they found on the ground—but they may not be able to speculate about things they simply cannot know. They have to stick to what the evidence says.

[Ian Lavery]

There is a big difference between the individuals being charged with corporate manslaughter and being found guilty of an offence, and what my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) is referring to, which is basically the causation of the accident. The causation of the accident is something that can be investigated completely differently, but using the same evidence that has been used in court for a criminal investigation. It is common sense that that would be the case.