LABOUR MPs have slammed the government’s Fire Safety Bill for lacking content on how to make buildings safer after the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

Brent North MP Barry Gardiner said during the second reading of the five-page Bill yesterday that “criticising it would be as futile as criticising an empty bookshelf.”

He said that its first clause clarifies the Fire Safety Order 2005 and its second clause is “no more than a delegated power to make regulations amending that order in the future.”

The former shadow international trade secretary continued: “It’s no more than a piece of legislative furniture, the content is yet to come.”

Andy Slaughter, MP for Hammersmith, a neighbouring constituency of Kensington where the remains of Grenfell Tower stand, said it was a “pity” that MPs only have “a small Bill in the way of primary legislation” three years after the fire killed 72 people in 2017.

“There is nothing to object to here because there is little to see,” he said.

“There is nothing to implement the recommendations from phase one of the Grenfell inquiry … We await the companion Building Safety Bill.

“It would have been helpful to have them side by side to ensure consistency and that all angles were covered.”

Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said that the government should “go further and faster on fire safety so that another Grenfell will not happen.”

He pointed out that not even the “simplest” of recommendations from the first stage of the inquiry, such as the inspection of fire doors and testing of lifts, were in the Bill.

Mr Thomas-Symonds urged James Brokenshire, former housing, communities and local government secretary and now security minister, to clarify when the Building Safety Bill will be available, after the minister had promised it would be before the summer.