HOW was the Grenfell fire allowed to happen? The seven-year inquiry considered this question in great detail. But if you look at what has happened to some of those involved since the fire, it is pretty obvious.
 
This June, the Times published a useful investigation by its journalist Martina Lees, who has done a lot of investigative work on building safety. Lees looked at the fate of bosses of the firms implicated in Grenfell, after the fire.
 
“Bosses of Arconic, Kingspan and Saint-Gobain — which manufactured parts of the west London tower’s lethal flammable cladding system — have received a total of £302.3 million since 72 people died in the disaster seven years ago.”
 
As Lees says: “All three manufacturers had made fire-safety claims about their panels that turned out to be false.”
 
Let’s look at one of these bosses. Pierre-Andre de Chalendar was the long-standing chief executive of French construction firm Saint-Gobain. He is now the chair of the company.

Lees found: “Since the fire, Saint-Gobain has paid its chief executive Pierre-Andre de Chalendar £11.7m.”

St Gobain’s British subsidiaries, Celotex and St Gobain UK, made most of the flammable Grenfell insulation. St Gobain bought Celotex in 2013. Evidence at the Grenfell inquiry shows St Gobain pressured Celotex to increase profits by selling insulation for higher buildings.

St Gobain singled out Grenfell as a “must-win” project in 2014. Inquiry evidence says Celotex staff pushed its insulation in “dishonest and misleading” ways including rigging a fire test.
 
Readers of my Morning Star column may remember that De Chalendar is also politically active.
 
Every January, the Franco-British Colloque brings together 100 British and French delegates — a mix of politicians, business executives and government officials — to discuss political issues over three days of debates, cocktails and dinners. It’s like a small, Davos-style conference focusing on France and Britain. The Colloque alternates between luxury hotels in Versailles and near London.
 
De Chalendar is one of the two co-chairs of the Franco-British Colloque. He helps design the agenda and decide who to invite and addresses the conference. He has held this position for many years.

His company, Saint-Gobain, helps fund the conference, alongside other big corporations and banks. That’s the same Saint-Gobain which is described in the Grenfell inquiry as acting in a “dishonest and cynical way.”

Saint Gobain presented their flammable RS5000 insulation “as suitable and safe for use on Grenfell Tower, although it knew that was not the case.”
 
I’ve been writing for years about de Chalendar’s involvement with the Colloque, arguing that, after Grenfell, it is a scandal.
 
But how did our politicians react to an invitation to a two-day luxury political conference funded by St Gobain and led by its boss? By accepting the invitation, of course.
 
The last Colloque, held in Versailles, happened this January. MPs who went include Labour’s Yvette Cooper (now Home Secretary) and Darren Jones (now a Treasury minister).

So did Rushanara Ali: she is now the housing minister in charge of safety. Ali has been to five of these Colloques, and Yvette Cooper has been to three, even though St Gobain’s role in the conference and Grenfell was well known.

Lib Dem MP Layla Moran and Tory Jesse Norman also went to this year’s Colloque. Other MPs who attended previous Colloques include Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves (2018) and Michael Gove (2020 and 2018).

Grenfell United, which represents families affected by the fire, said: “The inquiry report reveals that whenever there’s a clash between corporate interest and public safety, governments have done everything they can to avoid their responsibilities to keep people safe. The system isn’t broken, it was built this way.”

Our MPs enjoying a conference with cocktails paid for by a Grenfell firm for years after the event is an example of the system working.
 
 

Reeves’s Canadian model threatens to repeat PFI disasters
 

Chancellor Reeves visited Toronto in August to meet the “Maple 8” group of pension funds because she wants Britain “to learn lessons from the Canadian model.” Having ruled out major government infrastructure investments, Reeves seeks alternative sources of cash, including pension funds. But existing “Canadian model” investments aren’t all rosy.
 
Canadian pension schemes, including public-sector ones, are typically big enough to invest in major infrastructure projects. Reeves wants to attract more Canadian pension money.

She also wants to get the 87 British local government pension schemes to merge into one mega-fund so it could also fund her hoped-for big infrastructure.

The existing “Canadian model” shows the risks. Take CPP Investments, one of the “Maple 8” Reeves met. Since 1997 the Canada Pension Plan has bolstered its formerly contributions-based pensions by putting money in CPP Investments, their international investment arm.

CPP already have a taste for British infrastructure: CPP owns 32 per cent of Anglian Water. That’s the same Anglian Water that is currently increasing bills by an above-inflation 8 per cent. The same Anglian Water has paid tens of millions of pounds to investors like CPP, while not investing enough in infrastructure to stop sewage spills.
 
CPP explain it likes “large-scale infrastructure businesses with stable long-term cash flows and minimal substitution risk.”

That means it wants to be able to extract cash from effective monopolies that the public has little choice about using, even where, as with Anglian Water, service is poor.

CPP has a particular enthusiasm for government-regulated services that directly charge the public: CPP is a big investor in WestConnex and other Australian toll roads.

Critics say Westconnex, a major set of tunnels and motorways built around Sydney, locks users into big tolls for decades. But for CPP that means a “stable long-term cash flow.”

CPP may be the investment arm of a public-sector pension but can be as extractive as any big private investor. Under the old PFI scheme, Labour got private investors to fund public infrastructure, but the government ended up locked into long-term deals with over-the-odds fees for poor services.

The “Canadian model” can look similar, except the payments seem typically to come from charges directly on the public, like water rates or tolls, that are enforced by the government, rather than directly from the Exchequer itself, which may be a particular attraction for Reeves.

Follow Solomon on X @SolHughesWriter.