Isabel Hardman

Tim Montgomerie has some excellent intelligence on ConHome this morning that Francis Maude is about to gain a new PPS. The Cabinet Office Minister's former aide was Angie Bray, who was sacked after voting against the government at the second reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill. But Maude's replacement PPS, Stuart Andrew, is also a rebel. He was one of the 81 who defied the three-line whip in the autumn to vote for a backbench motion calling for a referendum on Britain's relationship with the European Union. As Tim points out on his blog, this is a sign that rebels might still have a hope of a job in the forthcoming reshuffle.

Bringing the UK Border Agency to heel has been one of the mammoth tasks facing ministers since the coalition formed. Ministers have recently been rather keen to suggest that backlogs in claims and migrants disappearing without a trace were coming under control - Immigration Minister Damian Green said at the start of this month that 'we have gripped it and dealt with' the problem of people overstaying their visa, for instance.

Jeremy Hunt has given an interview to House magazine this week which is well worth a read, not least because he deals rather graciously with the failure of his Liberal Democrat colleagues to support him when his back was against the wall over Murdoch. Even though Lib Dem ministers and MPs abstained on a vote calling for him to be referred to the independent adviser on ministers' interests over his contact with News Corp during its takeover bid of BSkyB, the Culture Secretary says: 'I never interpreted it as a personal thing.

Ed Miliband used his speech this morning on policing to attack the shambles on Olympic security staffing created by G4S. That was a sensible thing for an opposition leader to do, and he managed to give quite a sensible speech, all in all. He did not fall into the trap of saying that all outsourcing is bad - which would have been a strange thing for the Labour leader to say, anyway, given it was under his party in government that firms like G4S flourished. But he did point to what many across the political spectrum agree is a problem: that G4S effectively holds a monopoly on security and policing functions.

David Cameron's interview with the Telegraph today reveals that the Prime Minister would not campaign for an 'out' vote in a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. This will confuse some Conservatives, who had hoped that the 'fresh deal and a fresh settlement' that the Prime Minister described in the chamber earlier this month would either lead to a successful renegotiation followed by a referendum in which the government pushed for a 'yes' vote, or a failed attempt at renegotiation followed by a referendum in which the government pushed for a 'no' vote. But Cameron told Robert Winnett that he would never campaign for an 'out' vote. He adds: 'It comes back to this, who are going to be the winning nations for the 21st century?

The row over Jeremy Hunt's dealings with the Murdoch empire during its takeover bid for BSkyB seems rather a long time ago, even though only a month has passed since it peaked. But even though other rows have eclipsed this one, MPs are debating a very interesting backbench motion in the Commons this afternoon which criticises some of the decisions that the Prime Minister took around the Hunt affair. The motion is being led by Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, and runs as follows: 'That this House calls on the Government to implement the recommendation made by the Public Administration Select Committee in paragraph 44 of its Twenty Second Report of Session 2010-12, The Prime Minister's Adviser on Minister's Interests: independent or not?

G4S chief Nick Buckles will face MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee today. Here are some key questions they will want to ask him about the security firm's handling of staffing for the Olympics: 1. When did you start processing applications from potential staff? G4S launched its recruitment drive at the end of January, and just days later told the press it had been swamped by 20,000 applications. Ministers say they were repeatedly assured that the firm would overshoot its targets. So why did it take so long to realise that those 20,000 applications were not going to translate into 10,000 staff? 2. When did you realise that you were not going to meet your targets?

David Cameron and Nick Clegg's railways announcement wasn't the only attempt today by the coalition to bounce back from the strife of the past few weeks. Iain Duncan Smith also chose to point to another area where the Government is delivering on voters' demands: welfare. In an op-ed in the Daily Mail, the Work and Pensions Secretary said the £26,000 benefit cap for workless families, which is one of the government's most popular policies, is already effecting the behavioural change ministers hoped it would, with a third of claimants saying they are going to look for a job in order to avoid the cap, which comes into effect in 2013.

The row over G4S' failure to provide sufficient security cover for the Olympics is starting to feel a little awkward for Labour. This afternoon in the Commons, Yvette Cooper managed to rouse a sardonic chuckle from not just the benches opposite but also the hacks perched in the press gallery when she said that everyone wanted the Olympics to be a success. Why the laughs? Well, the danger for Labour is that in slamming the government's handling of G4S, the party gets too carried away and appears to be branding the Olympics a shambles too.