Part of Orders of the Day — Factories Bill. – in the House of Commons am ar 16 Mehefin 1937.
Mr John Jones
, West Ham Silvertown
It is most extraordinary to listen to some of the lectures that we receive from the front bench opposite, particularly when we are dealing with local affairs and the administration of the Laws of the country. We have just listened to a lecture which in itself has no relationship to the facts. Everybody who knows the work of a sanitary inspector knows that he has the right of entry, but after he has entered a factory what can he do? Report to the doctor, the medical officer of health, in his own particular locality. Everybody who is a member of a local authority knows that the medical officer himself cannot control the administration in detail, but can only give general instructions, and he has no more control than my cat. What we should do is to give authority to the people who have to do the work. What is the good of a sanitary inspector going to a factory down in my Constituency? He makes a report to the medical officer of health, who has not got time to attend to it. We have had one laid up for eight months, ill. He has an assistant, who has not the authority to do the things he might like to do, and in consequence nothing is being done, and your Factory Acts become inoperative. The big firms along the docks area do not take any notice of your sanitary inspector, because he has no power to act. Why should he not have power to act as well as to report? He is the man who has to do the job and find out what is wrong, but you say to him, "You cannot do anything. There is a gentleman at the top who has to tell you what you have to do." That is not good enough.
In the constituency that I represent we have over 50,000 people employed in factories. How can one man, a medical officer, control all those factories and know what is going on in all of them? The men who are acting as sanitary inspectors know their job, and they inform me that they cannot do it because they have no power. This Bill will prevent them from having even the power that they used to have, and they will simply be reporters still. I would like some of my colleagues in this House to come down with me to the Silvertown Division and go through some of the factories there and see some of the sanitary arrangements, reported for years as being unsatisfactory, and yet nothing has been done. So far as we are concerned, you are asking us simply to report and report and report, and somebody who should be able to carry out the job is not able to do the necessary alterations. Then you say to us that the sanitary inspector does not come in. The sanitary inspector ought to be one of the first men on the job, and if he is a conscientious man, as I believe most of them are, he will see that things are done. Therefore, I support the Amendment, in the hope that the Minister will accept it.
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