Isabel Hardman

David Cameron made a perfectly good stab at explaining what the government is doing to support families who are struggling at Prime Minister's Questions today. He said: 'I agree with the right hon. gentleman that we need to do more to help the poorest in our country. That is why we have lifted the personal tax allowance and taken 2 million of the lowest paid people out of tax altogether. Let us take someone who is on the minimum wage and works full time - because of the tax changes that we have made, their income tax bill has been cut in half. I would also make this point: because of the decisions that we made in this government to increase the child tax credit by £390 ahead of inflation, we have helped those families with their bills and we will continue to do more in the future.

As expected, today's report from the Commission on a Bill of Rights offered little. With a membership evenly split between Tory and Lib Dem nominees, it was set up to fail. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, who resigned from the Commission in March, tells me that this problem was exacerbated by the way in which it was run: it was barred from discussing either the European Court of Human Rights or the Convention. He says: 'The Commission was not able to have a productive discussion because of the determination of the civil service to produce an artificial argument'. Attention now moves to what the Conservatives will say about the matter in their manifesto.

Think the Commons is in uproar at the moment over gay marriage? Just wait until the legislation makes its way into the House of Lords. The received wisdom is that equal marriage will go into the upper chamber, but never make it out alive after a savaging from socially conservative peers. But is that true? If it's uproar you're looking for, then you're unlikely to be disappointed, but the chances of angry words in the chamber translating into embarrassing defeats for the government aren't quite so high. Remember that after 13 years of Labour in power, the House has a large liberal-leaning majority. There are 224 Labour peers and 90 Lib Dems.

This week's developments over gay marriage have left a febrile atmosphere in the Conservative party. As Fraser wrote yesterday, David Cameron seems to have driven his party 'quite mad' by pursuing the policy, and the mood in the tearoom after Maria Miller's statement on Tuesday certainly seems to have underlined that. I understand from a number of MPs that there was an 'excitable' confrontation between a member of the 2010 intake and one of the members of the Freedom to Marry group. The new MP was irritated by the position that his colleague had taken and was jabbing his finger angrily as he spoke.

The debate over benefit uprating will run and run because both sides think they are winning. George Osborne thinks the public resent generous benefits rises. Liam Byrne and Ed Balls want to call this a 'strivers tax' and think blue collar workers will fall into their arms. Byrne told Coffee House yesterday that Labour will be hurt opposing to the Welfare Uprating Bill. I understand that the Shadow Cabinet reached its decision after YouGov's polling showing C2DE  voters  - the three lowest socio-economic groups - saying benefits should have been increased in line with inflation. Osborne's Bill would increase welfare by 1pc, behind expected inflation.

By this stage in the Coalition, everyone would have expected at least one major bust-up between George Osborne and Vince Cable. But his evidence to today's Treasury Select Committee suggested that the Chancellor isn't so much involved in a stand-off with the Business Secretary as he is taking on his point of view. It was significant how many times Osborne had to explain a softening in what were previously hard-and-fast economic rules, and hard-and-fast policies. His refusal to rule out replacing the Bank of England's inflation target with a growth target is the most significant sign of a coalescing between the two men.

After giving her statement to the House of Commons on the government's plans for gay marriage, Maria Miller held a meeting with Tory MPs. I understand that the meeting was a question-and-answer session designed to help reassure Tories about the 'quadruple lock'. It was well-attended, although apparently the Secretary of State was around 25 minutes late, which meant Peter Bone left early to make another appointment. This was immediately interpreted as a walkout in protest from Bone, who is one of the more vocal opponents of the legislation. I spoke to Bone this evening, who said 'I wasn't storming out: it was a private Q&A meeting with Maria Miller who was 25 minutes late'. But even though he didn't storm out, Bone is still not happy or reassured by today's announcements.