‘Pulling up the drawbridge’: Alf Dubs criticises Shabana Mahmood’s plans for child refugees

Dubs came to the UK aged six on the Kindertransport, fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, whose parents migrated to the UK from Pakistan, is facing the suggestion from a veteran Labour peer that she is “pulling up the drawbridge once inside” when considering the plight of refugee children trapped abroad.

Alf Dubs, who came to the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, said the home secretary and other ministers had “kowtowed” to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK by preventing unaccompanied children from seeking refuge with UK-based family members.