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Hi, I'm Anouche, and on today's episode of the New Statement podcast,

I'm speaking to Labour Peer and Refugee campaigner Alftubbs to discuss the UK's response

to Ukrainian refugees and what more the government should be doing.

Thanks so much for joining us today. Before we get into the politics of it, I really wanted to

ask you first about how you feel seeing the scenes of people fleeing Ukraine. You came here,

yourself as a six-year-old refugee in 1939 via Kindertransport, fleeing the Nazis from Prague,

so it must awaken some feelings in here. It does, although in fairness, when I came on a Kindertransport,

the Holocaust hadn't really impacted. It was only a few months after the Nazis occupied Prague,

so there wasn't an impact, but still I was saying goodbye to my mum and saying goodbye to

everything I knew. To that extent, yes, the horror of what's happening in Ukraine, of course,

is probably matched only by what happened in Syria a few years ago, and people have been fleeing

terrible situations. Obviously, I have a bit of a fellow feeling with people who arrive here,

because I know what it's like. I spoke Czech and German. I didn't speak any English when I got here,

so there are similarities. It's also the sense that bewilderment

finds what is here, and it doesn't quite particularly find his young,

one doesn't quite understand the significance of what's happening.

What did you make of the initial response from the government when we knew that so many people

...