From Australia to health and finance

The Australian-born 61-year-old was already a party veteran when she was elected as MP for Leicester West in 1997 having served as press secretary to the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

Once in the House of Commons, she was a Treasury Minister and then a Minister in the Department for Trade and Industry before promotion in 2001 to the Cabinet as Trade and Industry Secretary and then Health Secretary.

Before entering Parliament, she worked for Age Concern and the civil liberties organisation Liberty.

Her achievements as Health Secretary include overseeing the ban on smoking in enclosed public places in England introduced in 2007.

But she also encountered controversy, most notably over problems with a junior doctors' job application scheme and with nurses who booed and heckled her in 2006 over her claims about the NHS.

Ms Hewitt stepped down from the Cabinet in June 2007 when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister and announced last June that she was leaving Parliament at the next election.

The mother-of-two strongly denied her decision to step down was related to the row over MPs' expenses, saying she hoped to see more of her family including her parents in Australia.

She also said she would be spending more time on work and charitable activities related to India. Her expenses claims were reported to have included 920 in legal fees when she moved out of a flat in her constituency before staying in hotels and then renting another flat in Leicester.