TORY MP Rory Stewart says he is considering reporting a national Sunday newspaper to the Press Complaints Commission after it printed a headline claiming he called his constituents ‘primitives’.

Mr Stewart was forced to apologise to people in his Penrith and the Border constituency after he admitted making ‘an extremely foolish’ remark in an interview - but he insisted his comments had been taken out of context.

He had originally told a Scottish Sun reporter: "Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing."

Later, the story was reproduced in The Sunday Mirror, which used the disputed headline.

The Eton-educated MP said he was highlighting the rural poverty in his area, not commenting on the individuals who live there.

Mr Stewart was also criticised for joking in the interview about local people failing to get medical help for a boy who was run over by a tractor.

He said in the interview: “They took him to Carlisle but they couldn’t be bothered to wait at the hospital.

"So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks then said he was fine.

"But I’m not so sure he was.”

In his Sunday blog, Mr Stewart said of the ‘primitive’ remark: "I meant that there are areas in Cumbria where people lack things, taken for granted in cities, and that these areas need more investment and more public services.

"It was never a judgement on people.

"The Sunday Mirror's misrepresentation of my words is an insult to the hard-working people of Cumbria.

"I am investigating raising it with the Press Complaints Commission.

"I remain very sorry for any hurt that this misrepresentation may have caused."

Afterwards, Mr Stewart added: “What I was trying to get across was not derogatory about people but that we have real needs here, we have communities that are very poor.

"It was an extremely foolish thing for me to say.”

Peter Thornton, Mr Stewart’s Lib Dem opponent at the General Election, said: “It was a strange thing to say.

"As a local person who has just checked, I can confirm my trousers are not held up with string.”