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Barwell cashes in on his ‘expertise’ as an ex-housing minister

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Cashing in: Gavin Barwell

Gavin Barwell, the author of How To Lose A Marginal Seat, is sticking his snout in the trough ever deeper.

Despite being firmly rejected by the voters of Croydon in 2017, the former Conservative MP and housing minister who ignored multiple warnings about fire safety before the Grenfell disaster looks like he’s doing better than ever.

Barwell, who was created a life peer by his former boss, Theresa Mayhem, has been signed up by PricewaterhouseCoopers as a paid “strategic adviser”. That should help pay for his kids’ private school fees, or bolster the bottom line of the ex-MP’s new company, Gavin Barwell Consulting Ltd…

PwC is one of the world’s biggest accountancy, auditing and management consultancy firms, operating in 158 countries, with 250,930 staff and global revenues in 2018 of £31.59billion – enough to build a Westfield Centre in Croydon 20 times over…

Westfield, and the development blight it has caused the town centre, is the real legacy to Croydon left by Barwell, the former member of the board of governors of the Whitgift Foundation, who brought the Australian mall developers into the borough in 2012.

After losing his seat in the House of Commons, Barwell was given shelter in No10 as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. It seems that our Gav is still riding along on Mayhem’s coat tails. On January 24, May banked a cool £96,000 from PwC, apparently for 12 hours’ work – yeah, eight grand per hour.

And within days, Barwell’s juicy appointment at PwC came through. Cushty.

Effectively, it is an audit firm making a political investment.

The PwC gig comes not long after Barwell was handed a directorship at Clarion Housing.

It seems that Barwell is determined to milk his short – and failed – term as housing minister for all it is worth.

According to his House of Lords declarations of interests, at least four out of five of his most recent speaking engagements, all in 2020, have been on housing. Yet since being elevated to the Lords in October 2019, he has risen from the red leather benches to speak only twice. Public speaking must pay considerably better than the £305 daily allowance Barwell can pocket at the Lords.

Barwell the comedy critic

He’s even trying his hand as a comedy critic.

Last week, responding to the news from Boris Johnson’s ministerial reshuffle that the Tories have now, in 10 years, had as many housing ministers as notoriously fickle Chelsea football club have had managers, Barwell tweeted, “Not funny.”

What a wag, eh? Those lucrative after-dinner speaking engagements will soon be rolling in.


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