Ben Shephard was forced to make an urgent correction on Good Morning Britain, telling viewers they may have 'got the wrong end of the stick' over studio guest Quentin Letts' comments about the House of Commons porn scandal.
On Wednesday afternoon it was reported that two individuals had told Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris they had witnessed an MP watching pornography both in the chamber and in a committee. This followed stories in the national press that an MP, purported to be a front bencher, was watching pornography on a mobile phone while sitting alongside a female minister.
The news made headlines, leaving the Government to deal with yet another scandal in the wake of 'Partygate' and the subsequent fines imposed on both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, and came in the same week that Labour's Angela Rayner was accused of adopting 'Basic Instinct tactics, ' to distract the Prime Minister. And the porn allegations continued to dominate TV news broadcasts on Thursday morning, with ITV star Ben discussing the matter with GMB co-host Ranvir Singh as they were joined by Quentin Letts.
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While admitting it felt "seedy and grotty," sketch writer Quentin then added: "Just playing devil's advocate for a second; if you've ever been in the House of Commons, it's an extremely boring place and it would be wrong for viewers to think that parliamentarians are constantly thinking about important matters of state.
"If you go in there, they're doing all sort of things. They're looking at their tablets and it's not exactly as if it's a church in there. And secondly I'll say, politics is politics and the politicians tend to represent the country and there are a lot of grotty people out there looking at pornography. And it's always struck me as a rather peculiar thing to do."
Some angry GMB viewers at home were left thinking that Quentin was defending the MP at the centre of the allegations, forcing Ben to make a correction after the show returned from an ad break. Looking down the lens, the presenter said: "Just quickly, because I feel like everyone has slightly got the wrong end of the stick Quentin, as it were.
"People seem to be in up in arms that you were defending watching porn in the Hose of Commons. That's not what you were doing," as Quentin replied: "That wasn't quite what I was saying, no. Never mind. I was trying to make the point that the House of Commons is a very boring place, but you should NOT watch porn boys and girls."
Ben added: "He was playing devil's advocate a bit and certainly not suggesting it was OK to do that. That was not the case at all."
