The regulation is fine. Its the policing.

Companies were allowed to change fire tests to make their products look better. I honestly can't see how on earth this is was allowed.

It was always my understanding that you had to submit your product to a third party for testing, and that third party was vetted.

Then there is the low grade corruption endemic in construction in the UK.

The fact that large councils have Quantity surveyors on a percentage fee, rather than a fixed fee, is a big problem.

I fail to see how this is any different that Boeing 737 Max which killed even more people. Everyone looked the other way and ignored real engineering, just to make more bucks (or pounds). Sadly I think that even is the company CEOs had their heads chopped off (as was common in England centuries ago) would change the behavior of cheating to make more money.

If they can make it so the companies that produced the cladding have to pay for refitting the various buildings, it's a pretty huge win for government(s).

Those companies have deep pockets too, so the government may feel like they're a good target in this instance.

Attention is a limited resource, both on the individual level and the aggregate. If your investigation uncovers a corporate scandal, it limits the ability of the public to focus on the government failings.

That seems unlikely. If this blows up in the press, people will become more interested in both corporate and government failings - which are deeply intertwined in this case, anyway.