Labour is demanding George Osborne come clean amid reports that he signed off a "patronising" Budget advert.
Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps was widely pilloried last week after posting an image on Twitter claiming cuts to bingo and beer taxes would "help hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy".
But according to the Sunday Telegraph, the image was designed on Treasury premises and signed off by the Chancellor, Tory election supremo Lynton Crosby, and the Prime Minister's political secretary Stephen Gilbert.
An unnamed Tory MP told the newspaper: "It is ridiculous that Grant Shapps has had to take the blame for this poster. When it went wrong they could easily have defended him and said that it was a team effort, which it was. Instead they have hung him out to dry."
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher has now written to Treasury Permanent Secretary Sir Nicholas Macpherson asking who was at the meeting that approved the ad.
Mr Dugher said: "The bingo-beer Budget poster once again showed the true face of David Cameron's Conservatives - a party run by an out of touch privileged few.
"We now learn that this patronising piece of Tory propaganda - which described working people as 'they' - was made in the Treasury and approved by George Osborne himself."
