Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946

63 Interpretation.

(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the meanings hereby assigned to them respectively, that is to say,—

• " coal " means bituminous coal, cannel coal and anthracite ;

• " coal industry activities " means colliery production, electricity, transport, sales and welfare activities, as denned in Part I of the First Schedule to this Act, and the activities incidental thereto mentioned in paragraph 7 of that Schedule ;

• " coal industry value " has the meaning assigned to it by paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of section ten of this Act ;

• " colliery activities " means searching or boring for, winning, working or getting, coal, bringing it to the surface, treating it and rendering it saleable, and includes depositing spoil arising from working coal or from any other of the activities mentioned in this definition ;

• " colliery concern " means a company whose business includes, or at any time on or after the first day of January, nineteen hundred and forty-six, included, the working of coal (excluding working undertaken for the purpose of digging or carrying away coal in the course of activities other than colliery activities, and working undertaken only as ancillary to the working of minerals other than coal), and any other person whose business includes, or at any such time included, such working of coal as aforesaid ;

• " Consolidated Fund " means the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, and includes the growing produce thereof ;

• " district wages ascertainments " means the periodical ascertainments of the results of the coal industry in accordance with which the wages of mineworkers have been regulated under agreements in that behalf entered into between colliery owners and mineworkers ;

• " documents " includes plans, sections, records of survey and similar things ;

• " financial year of the Board " means a period of twelve months ending with a day to be prescribed, so however that the first financial year of the Board shall be the period beginning with the passing of this Act and ending with the first occurrence of the prescribed day, and, in case of any alteration of the prescribed day, the duration of the financial year of the Board as to which the alteration is first to have effect shall be shortened or extended as may be prescribed, by not more than six months, so as to end on the new prescribed day ;

• " former freeholder's lease " has the meaning assigned to it by subsection (8) of section eleven of this Act;

• " functions " includes both duties and powers ;

• " mine of coal " means a space occupied by unworked coal or excavated underground for the purposes of colliery activities, and includes a shaft or adit made for those purposes, a coal quarry and opencast workings of coal;

• " the Miners' Welfare Fund " means the fund constituted by subsection (1) of section twenty of the Mining Industry Act, 1920 ;

• " the Minister " means the Minister of Fuel and Power ;

• " money payment " has the meaning assigned to it by subsection (3) of section eighteen of this Act;

• " prescribed " means prescribed by regulations ;

• " primary vesting date " has the meaning assigned to it by subsection (1) of section five of this Act ;

• " regulations " means regulations made by the Minister ;

• " stock issued for compensation " has the meaning assigned to it by subsection (5) of section twenty-one of this Act ;

• " transferred allied activities " means such activities as are—

  (a)

  of a kind referred to in Part II or III of the First Schedule to this Act in relation to the vesting in the Board by option of interests as being interests in things used, available for use or required for certain activities, or as being owned for certain activities, and

  (b)

  of a kind for which interests that in fact so vest were owned at the date of the vesting or for which things wherein those interests then subsisted were then used,

  and that expression includes also activities in connection with farms interests in which in fact so vest, and such activities as are mentioned in sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 21 of that Schedule ;

• " transferred interests " has the meaning assigned to it by section nine of this Act;

• " utilities " means electricity, gas, water, steam, compressed air and hydraulic power ;

• " value for subsidiary purposes " has the meaning assigned to it by paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of section ten of this Act.

(2) The working of coal by an individual by virtue of the grant of a gale in the Forest of Dean or in any other part of the hundred of St. Briavels in the County of Gloucester shall not be deemed, for the purposes of this Act, to constitute him a colliery concern.

(3) References in this Act to activities of any kind (whether or not described by that word) shall be construed as limited to activities of that kind carried on in Great Britain, but not so as to exclude, in the case of selling or supplying, selling or supplying for export or selling or supplying imported goods in Great Britain.

(4) References in this Act to any enactment shall, unless the context otherwise requires, be construed as references to that enactment as amended by or under any other enactment, including this Act.