Oliver Dowden has suggested that Angela Rayner should resign over the row over her council house.
During Prime Minister’s Questions, the deputy prime minister referred to the Labour deputy leader’s previous calls for Boris Johnson to quit over lockdown parties in Downing Street, and urged her to “follow her own advice”.
But Ms Rayner said that the Tories should stop their “obsession” with her living arrangements.
Mr Dowden, standing in for Rishi Sunak on Wednesday, said: “As ever, the deputy leader is always looking to attack others’ failures, but never the one to take responsibility for her own.
“She once said you shouldn’t be waiting for the police to bang on your door. If you did it, then you shouldn’t be doing your job.
“The Rt Hon landlady should forget her tax advice and follow her own advice.”
Ms Rayner has been accused of lying about her former home in Vicarage Road, Stockport, which she bought in 2007 using the Right to Buy scheme before making a £48,500 profit when she sold it eight years later.
She was registered at the property for five years after she married Mark Rayner in 2010, while he was listed at a different address in Lowndes Lane, a mile away.
The confusion over which property was her principal residence has led to questions over whether she avoided capital gains tax by retaining the property for half a decade.
Police are investigating multiple allegations against Ms Rayner, with at least a dozen officers assigned to the case.
Ms Rayner claims to have taken expert advice to “make sure she hadn’t done anything wrong” and said the advice categorically stated that she did not owe any tax on her Vicarage Road property.
Mr Dowden on Wednesday appeared to be quoting words spoken by Ms Rayner in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain about Mr Johnson’s role in the so-called partygate scandal.
Ms Rayner, who was one of the loudest voices calling for the then prime minister to quit, said in January 2022: “He shouldn’t be waiting until the Met police bang on his door, it’s pretty simple. Did you do it, yes or no? If you did it, then you shouldn’t be in your job.”
She told the Tories in the Commons on Wednesday: “Now instead of obsessing over my house, when will he get a grip and show the same obsession with ending no fault evictions?”
Attacking Mr Dowden over the progress of the Renters’ Reform Bill, to be voted on by MPs later on Wednesday, she said: “I know the party opposite is desperate to talk about my living arrangements, but the public wants to know what this Government is going to do about theirs?”
The deputy prime minister joked in response: “Well, to begin with, it is a pleasure to have another exchange with the Right Honourable lady in this house, our fifth in 12 months.
“Any more of these and she’ll be claiming it as her principal residence.”
Ms Rayner is facing scrutiny over whether she or her husband paid the right amount of capital gains tax when two properties they owned simultaneously during their marriage were sold; whether she broke electoral law by registering the wrong address as her permanent address; and whether a single person’s discount on council tax was wrongly claimed at one of the properties.
She has repeatedly insisted she has done nothing wrong, but has declined to publish details of her tax affairs. She has said she will “do the right thing and step down” if she is found to have committed a criminal offence.
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