A Conservative MP has told GB News how he and his children have become firm friends with a Ukrainian family after he decided to offer them shelter.

Duncan Baker MP said: “We will always remember where we were when we heard that Russian missiles had hit Ukraine.

“Very swiftly afterwards, I was working in the department with Michael Gove at the launch of the homes for Ukraine scheme which was to bring Ukrainian families to the United Kingdom so that they could find safety.

“I remember saying to Michael Gove, ‘I think I’m going to do this, I think my family are going to help’ and I went home and I said to my wife ‘what do you think about it’?

“And so my wife was amazing, straight away she said, ‘yes, let’s do it’. It was my children…they said Dad, we can’t do that, we don’t see you very much. They won’t be able to speak English and it’ll be very different in our house.”

In a discussion with Arlene Foster on GB News, he added: “I said, ‘girls, that’s not the way to be, sometimes in life there are things you have to do to help others and I want you to have a little think about this’.

“And I’m very proud of them. They went to bed and got up in the morning and said, ‘Daddy we think we are absolutely right. We want to help somebody. And that’s how it all started’.”

“They’ve been with us for a number of months…and you know, I have this little kind of romantic notion that one day when this is all over, they will be the best of friends forever and they’ll be at my daughter’s wedding and she’ll be his.”

Mr Baker also said he has been to Ukraine to deliver aid supplies: “We went back on November 1, first of all, to take blankets for the front line.

“We made that 2,000 mile trip and we did it so that we could give aid but also so that Anna could see her husband.

“It was just the most incredibly moving moment to get to meet the man whose family you’re looking after. And we said that we would come back.

“He can’t speak an awful lot of English and Anna can speak very good English now and I just said to him, we left him at the side of the road, ‘we don’t know when we will see you again but I make this promise to you, that however long this takes, I will look after your family’.”

He continued: “We went back last week in my recess. We took – quite extraordinary – 112 generators.

“Myself and a gentleman called Rob Scammell in North Walsham in North Norfolk helped me raise huge amounts of money from the general public and others.

“We took all those generators and we were able to see Vitaly again…it was pretty difficult. Obviously the missiles are going into sporadic locations, there was actually a missile strike in the night when we were there.”

Mr Baker also spoke about his fundraising activities: “We raised £18,500 pounds in 13 weeks from public donations.

“We raised about £40,000 in total because people went out and bought generators specifically for us and had them shipped to North Norfolk, and then we had people just emptying their sheds and saying someone needs this more than I do.

“We took them all over and they will be used in orphanages, hospitals, on the front line for soldiers to charge up equipment, community buildings and obviously for households that are being hit by these missile strikes.”