Mike Smithson, PoliticalBetting.com

tweets:, external New Tory poster from Saatchi. My initial reaction is that it doesn't quite have what it takes

Image source, Conservative Party

Tories launch new poster campaign, by Saatchi.

A bit more on the candidate chosen by Labour to take on Respect MP George Galloway in Bradford in the general election. She is Naz Shah, the chair of a mental health charity called Sharing Voices Bradford. She is also known for her campaigning after her mother, Zoora Shah, was jailed in 1993 for poisoning her partner Mohammed Azam, after years of suffering domestic violence.

Originally, Labour had chosen a London councillor, Amina Ali, to stand against Mr Galloway, but she stood aside days after being picked, saying the campaign for the Yorkshire seat would cause "massive disruption" to her children's lives.

House of Lords
Parliament

Peers back plans to create a mandatory duty on health professional and teachers to notify police of female genital mutilation within one month of becoming aware of the crime.

Image source, LBC

tweets:, external Nick Clegg is taking your calls and questions on mental health. Watch it all live here: http://l-bc.co/qPNCO2

tweets:, external Three children in every classroom has a mental health condition, Dep PM Nick Clegg tells @lbc

Remember the queues that led to voters being turned away outside some polling stations at the 2010 election? It won't happen again, according to the head of the Electoral Commission. Jenny Watson said anyone stuck in a queue at 22:00 will still be able to cast their vote. The full story is here.

The World at One BBC Radio 4
Presented by Martha Kearney

Writer Alan Bennett says the one thing his country excels at is hypocrisy. He's the latest to be asked by Radio Four's The World At One to name one area in which the UK is world class. He said he'd discarded other ideas such as the National Trust, medieval churches and Swaledale in Yorkshire in favour of attitudes towards language, literature and the law.

House of Commons
Parliament

The Conservative MP for Wokingham, John Redwood, says: "If we are going to have devolution in England, we first need devolution to England."

He argues that England needs more powers over areas such as transport, as there are "more generous devolution settlements now being offered to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland".

tweets: , externalGovt sources say Labour claims that scrapping control orders enabled Jihadi John to travel to #syria are "highly speculative"

Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown says politicians must stop asking what Scotland can do for them - and instead explain what they can do for Scotland. In a speech in Glasgow, he accused the SNP of focusing on "the minutiae of Westminster insider politics" with Labour ahead of the general election, rather than "the big issues that matter such as ending poverty, unemployment, inequality and injustice in Scotland".

"Even if the SNP seem happy to spend their time talking about hung parliaments, post-election deals and coalitions, we will spend our time talking about new Scottish jobs, new Scottish businesses and new Scottish technologies, and how we can benefit from leading a global economic revolution," he said.

Image source, PA

The Palace of Westminster may have to be abandoned within 20 years unless an extensive programme of repairs and modernisation is agreed, John Bercow has warned. The Commons Speaker said a "not inconsequential sum of public money" was needed to keep the Houses of Parliament "fit for purpose".

A look back at two key political stories of the day:

• Home Secretary Theresa May has been challenged in the Commons on anti-terror measures

• She denied changes in the law made it easier for a network of suspected terrorists to operate in West London - among them, the Islamic State killer Mohammed Emwazi

• David Cameron and Ed Miliband have been promoting their rival plans on housing

• The Tories have pledged to double the number of new starter homes to 200,000 by 2020 - at a discounted rate for first time buyers

• Labour want to see 200,000 new homes built a year by 2020

• The Lib Dems want to see 300,000 new homes built annually by 2020, including 10 new garden cities

House of Commons
Parliament

Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, describes devolution to Greater Manchester as a "deathbed repentance by a government which had centralised continuously in a country that is over-centralised already".

He claims that a concentration of power in London and the south-east of England "needs to be reversed so the rest of us can have a chance".

A bit more on the latest poll from the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft:, external

• Conservatives - 34%; Labour - 31%; UKIP - 14%; Lib Dems - 7%; Greens - 7%

• 36% said a Tory government would deliver strong economic growth, compared with 21% for Labour

• On the NHS, 37% expected to see improvements under Labour, compared with 13% under the Tories

• Action to tackle tax avoidance more likely under David Miliband, those polled said

• Little confidence that either party would be able to reduce immigration significantly, with 26% thinking that was likely under the Tories and 13% under Labour.

1,003 adults were interviewed by telephone between 27 February 27 and 1 March.

Susan Hulme
BBC parliamentary correspondent

The former NATO Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, has said it's "absurd" to blame the security services for failing to stop people travelling to fight for Islamic State.

Speaking in the Lords, he said it was completely unrealistic to expect that everyone who was followed or identified by the security services should be locked up, because there was no system yet invented that was "capable of identifying and imprisoning all of those who might conceivably in the future be guilty of some terrorist act".

tweets:, external Control orders vs #TPIMs - the background to Parliament's recent decision to restore relocation is here: …https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/relocation-relocation-relocation/ …

tweets:, external Congratulations to @NazShahBfd - selected as Labour's candidate to win back Bradford West.

Join Victoria Derbyshire on her new daytime TV programme from 7 April on BBC 2, BBC News Channel and online. In the run up to the general election, she will be debating the key issues likely to affect the way you vote with a live studio audience. If you want to have your say and take part please email Victoria@bbc.co.uk

Some 41% of voters back calls for Britain to continue spending 2% of GDP on defence, a survey suggests. About one in five (21%) oppose such a move, according to a poll by Usurv for the Press Association.

More men than women agreed that approach was right - 51% compared with 32% - while support increased with people's salaries, the survey suggests.

Asked about the pledge to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid - 45% opposed this while 29% backed it. A total of 1,000 people took part in the online poll.