Mining Industry Act 1920

20 Establishment of fund for improvement of social conditions of colliery workers

(1) There shall be constituted a fund to be applied for such purposes connected with the social well-being, recreation, and conditions of living of workers in or about coal mines and with mining education and research as the Board of Trade, after consultation with any Government Department concerned, may approve.

(2) The owners of every coal mine shall, before the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, and before the same day in each of the subsequent five years, pay into the said fund a sum equal to one penny a ton of the output of the mine during the previous calendar year, and the sums so payable in respect of any mine shall be defrayed as part of the working expenses of the mine and shall be recoverable either as a debt due to the Crown or by the Board of Trade summarily as a civil debt:

Provided that in the case of the first payment the amount shall be calculated with reference to the output during the six calendar months ending the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty.

(3) The duty of allocating the money from time to time standing to the credit of the said fund to the several purposes aforesaid shall be vested in a committee consisting of five persons, appointed by the Board of Trade, of whom one shall be appointed by the Board of Trade after consultation with the Mining Association of Great Britain, and another after consultation with the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. The committee shall have the assistance of three assessors appointed by the Minister of Health, the Board of Education and the Secretary for Scotland respectively; the assessors shall have the right of attending meetings of the committee and of taking part in the deliberations thereof, but not of voting; and different persons may be appointed by the above-mentioned departments to act as assessors in relation to different matters :

Provided that the Committee shall take into consideration any scheme submitted by a district committee, and that before allocating any money for a local purpose they shall consult with the district committee (if any) concerned; and that the Committee shall allocate for the benefit of the several districts mentioned in Part I. of the Second Schedule to this Act sums equal to four-fifths of the contributions from the owners of coal mines in those districts respectively.

(4) The committee may invite a local authority to submit a scheme for any of the purposes to which the fund may be applied, and, if such scheme be approved by the committee, they may make such grants in aid to the said local authority out of the fund and upon such conditions as may seem to them desirable:

Provided that in no case shall any grant be made out of the fund for the building or repairing of dwelling-houses.

(5) Where money is allocated for the purpose of meeting the cost, in whole or in part, of providing accommodation and facilities at a coal mine for the workmen taking baths and drying clothes, and such accommodation and facilities are so provided, section seventy-seven of the Coal Mines Act, 1911, shall apply as if such accommodation and facilities had been provided under that section :

Provided that—

(a) cost of maintenance shall not be deemed to include any interest on capital expenditure so far as that expenditure was met out of money allocated from this fund; and

(b) the contribution of the workmen to the cost of maintenance shall be reduced by the proportion which the money so allocated from the fund bears to the total capital expenditure.

(6) Payments out of and into the fund, and all other matters relating to the fund, and moneys standing to the credit of the fund (including temporary investments thereof) shall be made and regulated in such manner as the Board of Trade, subject to the approval of the Treasury, may direct.

(7) The Board of Trade shall in each year cause an account to be prepared and transmitted to the Comptroller and Auditor-General for examination showing the receipts into and issues out of the said fund in the financial year ended the thirty-first day of March preceding, and the Comptroller and Auditor-General shall certify and report upon the same, and such account and report shall be laid before Parliament.