The Foreign Secretary seemed shocked when Mr Peston wanted to talk about “something rather extraordinary about your [Hunt’s] childhood” during an interview on Wednesday evening. He said: “Could you just tell me a little bit about what that was?” Mr Hunt replied: “Well I don’t talk about that normally, and I wouldn’t say this is something that’s affected me emotionally because she was just a few months old when she died in a terrible accident and I was too young to ever remember it. “But I do know it affected my parents.”
Mr Hunt seemed reluctant to speak about the matter further.
But Mr Preston then asked: “It must have affected you, don’t you think? I mean, this is the sort of tragedy that has a profound affect on families.”
Hunt replied: “Well I was only two years old so it’s not something I have any memories of. But as I say, I do know it affected my parents.
“Maybe, when I met parents who had lost children in the NHS, maybe that triggered something in me, but I don’t know, I wouldn’t claim this is something that had a big affect on me personally.”
Mr Peston posted a clip of the interview on Twitter, but many social media users were quick to share their disgust at the question.
One Twitter user said: “There is a line, and a personal tragedy being used for gotcha journalism purposes well and truly crosses it.”
Another person wrote: “Jeremy Hunt handled it very well considering it has zilch to do with his campaign and wasn’t expecting it.”
Someone else got a bit heated with their comment: “Good Lord, what the f*** made you ask him that?
“There are so many questions you could ask on policy and you chose to surprise him with a question about a personal family tragedy when he was two?”
Mr Peston has since said sorry for the tweet but added he had asked Mr Hunt for permission to ask about the “terrible family event in his life”.
He tweeted: “I have upset many of you by asking this. But it was not a “gotcha” as you seem to think.
“I told Jeremy Hunt well in advance I had heard of this terrible family event in his life and asked if he would be happy to talk about it. He said yes.
“My view was that it would aid understanding of him if he talked about it.
“Maybe I asked the questions clumsily.
“But I would never have entered such difficult private space without the permission of the interviewee.
“Sorry to have upset so many of you.”
