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Carbon Monoxide Detectors

On 28 January 2004 it snowed in High Peak—that is not unusual at this time of year. The snow was so heavy that school buses were summoned and children sent home. My constituent, Mary Ann Bailey, then aged 15, went to a friend's home in Hadfield, near Glossop, for the afternoon, with others. At 4.40 that afternoon the emergency services found Mary Ann and a friend, Martin Taylor, dead at their friend's home. The previous week a valve had been replaced on a gas boiler in the room below where the young people died. It had been incorrectly fitted, by one Jason Barton, and as a result the gas pressure was too high and the gas was not burning efficiently. Carbon monoxide was being produced by the boiler and it killed the two young people. Two years later a jury failed to agree—for a second time—on a charge of manslaughter against Mr. Barton for his negligence. Instead, he was convicted of a breach of health and safety legislation. He was fined just £2,000 and had his CORGI registration removed. The Health and Safety Executive stated in evidence that 36 properties where Mr. Barton had worked had gas installations which rendered them either ““at risk”” or in ““immediate danger””; and that 120 acts of faulty workmanship had been identified in Mr. Barton's work over just 12 months. The judge at Nottingham Crown court said that Barton should have gone to jail. The judge also regretted that the law said that Barton could only be fined, and that the fine had to relate to his ability to pay. Prosecutions for negligence in this field too often fail to convict and I know that that is of great concern to those interested in gas safety. In November 2007, another constituent, pensioner John Froggatt, sat down with a friend to share a whisky in a caravan in Bamford in the Hope valley. Again it was a cold High Peak night. Although he did not intend to stay out for long, the gas heater was switched on for warmth. Two days later, the two missing pensioners' bodies were found. It is believed that the heater was in good working order, but that a mouse had built its nest in the flue over the summer, preventing the products of combustion from escaping from the caravan. Carbon monoxide had built up and killed both men in what was likely to have been a slow, but relatively painless death.