Kate Garraway asked a Tory MP if Prime Minister Boris Johnson is "above the law" as the minister dodged questions about the Downing Street apartment improvement payments.
James Cleverly, Minister for Middle East and North Africa, was grilled by hosts Kate Garraway and Sean Fletcher over pressure on Mr Johnson to respond to questions about who paid for refurbishments made at the flat he lives in in Downing Street.
The Electoral Commission is investigating.
Mr Cleverly responded: "Ok, we've just come out of a report on the situation in India and my boss, the Foreign Secretary, is about to meet with his foreign ministerial colleagues from around the globe to discuss some of the really important issues we've been discussing.
"And I get that there is a huge amount of interest in certain circles about this but there will be reports that will be coming out in the near-future, no doubt. The prime minister will respond to those reports. But I think the juxtaposition of the images of what we're seeing in India -"
Kate responded: "You're being a bit mean there."
The MP then said: "I'm not. I'm genuinely not."
But Kate continued: "Because you're suggesting that we think that this issue is more important than a person dying every four minutes in India, which obviously we don't."
"Yeah that's what you have been," Cleverly interrupted.
Kate asked again: "But at the core of it is an issue of trust in the government. Did the government get it right? Has it got integrity? And it leads back to other issues of about how PPE was procured, all of that.
"It's about trust and integrity and trust in the people elected to lead to behave properly in a pandemic dealing with terrible situations like this. So that's why it's important. Is Boris Johnson above the law?"
Mr Cleverly replied: "Well, no one is above the law and the reports will come out when they come out and the prime minister will respond to what they say."
Mr Cleverly responded to a further question about the impace of the flat refurbishment story on the polls, telling host Sean Fletcher that The Tory Party has been in control for 11 years and if somebody showed him a poll back then of the Conservatives being between five and 11 points ahead of Labour, Mr Cleverly "would have taken that".
