This Morning sparks uproar with 'insensitive' Southport comment

This Morning sparked uproar on Tuesday following their segment about the Southport stabbing, which claimed the lives of two children.

Rochelle Humes and Dermot O'Leary invited Sonia Sodha into the studio and spoke with Nick Ferrari via video link about the latest news headlines. However, before they did that, they chatted with Good Morning Britain reporter Nithya Rajan, who was at the scene in Southport.

Not only were two children killed, but six people remain in critical condition in hospital. Speaking about the incident, Nithya began: "Police are questioning a 17-year-old they arrested him in the village of Banks which is about a 15-minute drive from where I'm standing.

"Police are still trying to get their head around the motve. They ruled out terrorism, but they say the motive for this horrendous attack remains unclear.

"It took place yesterday at Hart Street which is just over my shoulder at a dance class. It was a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, it was meant to be a fun start to the summer for the children here and the dance class was fully packed. "It was fully booked for 25 children and I was just speaking to some of the mums that have been coming here earlier this morning to lay flowers."

Dermot and Rochelle soon turned to Nick, who shared his thoughts. He said: "There will be hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of mums and dads taking their children to all sorts of summer camps this very week because all the school holidays kick in. And this was like a sort of summer camp in a community hall where it was Taylor Swift day and the girls aged roughly between six and 10 were going to have a lovely day and start their summer holidays.

"And I think it's exactly what Sir Kier Starmer said last night. This is beyond the worst nightmares of anybody who's ever been a parent. You send your child to something that you think is going to be a joyful event and then obviously, it has to be determined exactly what happened, but it would appear that someone with all sorts of whatever issues might be decides to wreak this sort of violence, but it is such a chilling warning because this is the start of the summer holidays.

"Two little children aren't going to get through it, others are seriously injured, and we ought to say again, as mentioned in the report, tremendous bravery by people on the scene, with local police suggesting that it could have been even worse if a couple of adults, one of whom we understand is now fighting for their life...if a couple of adults hadn't decided to get involved."

"Thank you, Nick, it doesn't bare thinking about. Okay, let's move on," Dermot said before adding: "Rachel Reeves yesterday has announced plans to scrap the winter fuel payments for up to 10 million pensioners."

However, some angry fans took to social media to brand the segment "insensitive" with many saying the segment shouldn't have been cut short.

One fumed: "Let’s move on? They spent longer talking about the Strictly scandals than they did about this horrific stabbing spree in Southport."

Another agreed: "Okay let's move on?? How insensitive, that's shocking from Dermot! Kids died.... people are injured you can't just "Move on" #ThisMorning."

"Okay let’s move on from the children's death - says Dermot. How about you offer your condolences to the families affected?" a third added. (sic)

A fourth agreed: "That was odd, wasn’t it?"

"How on earth did they spend longer talking about the Strictly Scandal than young kids who were murdered?? Absolute disgrace #ThisMorning," someone else raged.

Another echoed: "Last week, each day included a 10 minute in-depth discussion about Strictly. Yesterday, Gyles defended the Dutch child rapist. Today, a brief mention of yesterday's event, but let's move on to how some kids' holidays weren't disrupted by JSO and Ashley's dress. #ThisMorning." (sic)

This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.