Gordon Brown will seek to steady the Government ship when he appears alongside Peter Hain’s replacement to announce a new package of welfare reforms on Monday.

James Purnell, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, has inherited an announcement on measures to get more people into work. He is expected to announce on Monday the expansion of skills training for the unemployed and sanctions for claimants refusing to take places in a bid to regain the initiative from the Tories.

Mr Purnell and the other youthful winner of the reshuffle, Andy Burnham, his replacement as Culture Secretary, took to the airwaves to insist that the Government remained energetic despite its long run of misfortunes.

The Prime Minister rejected claims that he had dithered over Mr Hain’s fate until a police investigation made his resignation inevitable.

He said: “I always said — and I think this is the right thing to do — that we would wait until the Electoral Commission itself reported. They had the facts, they were looking at them, they have made their judgment and now we get on with business.”

He chose instead to make a virtue of the necessity of the ensuing reshuffle. “My new appointments of young ministers yesterday ensures that we will be moving in every aspect of the reform agenda to guarantee people that they will have better public services in the future,” he said.

As a sign that the Government was continuing with its agenda regardless of yesterday’s resignation, Mr Brown pointed to the statement on employment policy prepared by Mr Hain, which will now be delivered to Parliament by his successor.

As officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Economic and Specialist Crimes Command began their investigation yesterday into Mr Hain’s failure to report £103,000 of donations, Mr Purnell predicted that he would be cleared. Paul Murphy, who replaced Mr Hain as Wales Secretary yesterday, said that he hoped to see him back on the political front line once the police investigation was over.

Meanwhile Mr Burnham said that he “must be the luckiest man in Britain today” as he toured a North London school, his first engagement as Culture Secretary. Emphasising that it was his first day in the job, he indicated that he was keeping “an open mind” about how public service broadcasting should be funded in the future. His predecessor raised the question recently of whether the BBC should share licence fee income with other broadcasters.

Mr Brown’s room for manoeuvre was expanded by the agreement of Lord Grocott to bring forward from this summer a previously arranged decision to step down as Lords Chief Whip.

The reshuffle, which also gave Yvette Cooper promotion to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, means another shake-up this summer is now unlikely, a Downing Street insider said.

The promotion of three young politicians hands David Cameron a dilemma over whether to freshen his own top team. With the prospects of an election receding well into next year and beyond Mr Cameron must maintain momentum without sacrificing credibility, the former Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, said in an interview for GMTV. Mr Clarke caused irritation by suggesting that Mr Cameron was using too many soundbites.

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