tweets, external: David Cameron's spox on Tele/C4: "He thinks that it is absolutely right that we have robust investigative journalism in this country."

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, PA

Earlier in the Commons, during health questions, we watched a rather prickly exchange between Conservative front-bencher Jane Ellison and Labour's Andy Slaughter. They were sparring over the health services in west London.

Mr Slaughter complained: "What is failing is the closure of emergency departments... that is putting on an intolerable strain. Will the government look again at this issue? Will you stop closing A&Es in west London?"

But Ms Ellison hit back: "I'm afraid you have got a very, very dismal track record of campaigning on this issue. We've all seen the leaflets that have been put out in west London and I can only say to your constituents in the coming election they would glean more from reading their tea leaves than reading your leaflets if they want to know the truth about the NHS in west London."

House of Commons
Parliament

In the Commons, several MPs have lent support to Jack Straw in the face of his recent criticism and are congratulating him for his leadership of the Commons Governance Committee.

Conservative MP and fellow committee member Jacob Rees-Mogg thanks Mr Straw for his "amazing chairmanship". "It was amazing to see so sophisticated and capable an operator steer us through," he says. While Liberal Democrat MP John Thurso pays tribute to Mr Straw for producing an "excellent report".

Our colleagues over at Democracy Live do, however, point out that congratulating a chair is traditional in the House of Commons when debating the work of the committee.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind says, "I don't think I did anything wrong," in this clip of him being asked questions by the BBC's Norman Smith. He admitted that if he'd said "entitled" when explaining he needed more than an MP's salary with his professional background, then he may have used the wrong word.

tweets, external: Sir Malcolm Rifkind on whether he jumped or was pushed: "I haven't had any visits from Number 10 or any discussion with Number 10."

tweets, external: Rifkind was right about one thing, if a little ahead of his time. Soon he'll be self-employed and nobody will pay him a salary

Green leader Natalie Bennett is attracting lots of attention today - though probably not for the reasons she would have wanted. Aside from her interview on LBC - a tough listen that one - she has been launching her party's election campaign. Watch some of her speech from the launch here.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, has called Tory MP Andrew Rosindell a "dinosaur". Mr Rosindell had raised a query about Ms Reeves' position - suggesting she would not be able to give a top government job her "full attention" shortly after having a baby. But Ms Reeves said today: "These are the first remarks I've ever seen from him. But what he's said suggests a very backdated, old-fashioned view of women in Parliament and probably women in general." More on Labour List, external.

House of Commons
Parliament

Jack Straw is currently talking in the House of Commons about the commission bill, but has so far made no mention of the the recent allegations which surround his conduct.

tweets: , externalThere will not be many sympathetic accounts of the Green Party campaign blowing up on launch pad. Here is one. , external

BBC Radio 5 live

Conservative MP-turned-author Lord Archer - no stranger to the rough side of Westminster himself - tells BBC Radio 5live he feels "immense sympathy" for Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind emerged into one hell of a scrum outside the intelligence and security committee meeting earlier. Here he is with our own Norman Smith, surrounded by cameras and police officers.

Norman Smith
BBC Assistant Political Editor

Boris Johnson is probably ruing the day he went off to Ruislip because now there's a vacancy in Kensington, right on his doorstep.

tweets: , externalNatalie Bennett's habit of car crash interviews doesn't make her a bad person or give her bad ideas. It makes her a really bad politician.

tweets: , externalTories think MPs should get a pay rise to attract a better "calibre", but don't apply that logic to public sector where pay is frozen #wato

House of Commons
Parliament

Our colleagues across the road here say Jack Straw is in the Commons ahead of the House of Commons Commission Bill debate and is currently talking to Speaker John Bercow. Mr Straw, of course, was also filmed for the Channel 4/Daily Telegraph sting, but so far today all the focus has been on his fellow target.

Some facts for you. Sir Malcolm Rifkind's constituency is Kensington, not Kensington and Chelsea, which was abolished in boundary changes before the last election. Rifkind secured 50% of the vote, but there are certainly many safer Conservative seats than this one. In fact, it is only 214th in the Commons when ranked by the % of the vote taken by the winning candidate.

Daily Politics
Live on BBC Two

President of YouGov Peter Kellner has told journalists to calm down regarding election polls.

"You should never take one poll to the point where one percentage point makes a difference. What you should do is when you have a skew of polls you should take them together... shake them up.

"And the story is very simple. Since October, actually, pretty well every poll has shown the two parties level-pegging, or so close together that you might as well assume the Conservatives and Labour are level-pegging.

"I would advise journalists, politicians, voters - calm down, calm down. If you get one party suddenly going five points up, and then three or four other polls going five points up - something is changing, but we are not getting those movements."

Eleanor Garnier
Political correspondent

Parties want campaign launches to generate positive headlines, but unfortunately for the Greens, I think most people will remember today for that car crash interview not what they had to say about their policy plans.