Politician; Born December 12, 1930; Died April 17, 2008.

GWYNETH Dunwoody, who has died in hospital aged 77 after recently undergoing heart surgery, was the longest- serving female Member of the Parliament and was the scourge of governments - both Conservative and Labour.

The Labour member for Crewe and Nantwich was born in Fulham in 1930 and came from a politically active family. Both her grandmothers were suffragettes, her father, Morgan Phillips, was general secretary of the party and her mother was a minister in the House of Lords and later became Lord Lieutenant of London.

Dunwoody joined the Labour Party in 1946 and was a town councillor in Totnes in the 1960s before entering parliament as the MP for Exeter in 1966. From 1967 she was a minister on the Board of Trade before losing her seat in 1970. However, she was then elected MP for Crewe in 1974 - which became Crewe and Nantwich in a 1983 boundary change - and was also a member of the European Parliament from 1974 to 1979.

She was a chairwoman of the Labour Party communications committee, and when she died was the outspoken chairwoman of the transport select committee, a role in which she enlivened many a Westminster afternoon with her tough questioning and rapier-like wit.

Those summoned to give evidence before her - be they captains of industry or government ministers - knew they were in for a severe grilling. The usual tricks of evasion would not wash with her and she had little time for anyone hiding behind a plethora of figures or wanting to wriggle away from probing questions.

Sometimes she could be quite withering and this was reflected in the committee's subsequent reports following evidence sessions. These reports were littered with such phrases as "the committee was astonished that " or "it was clear that little thought had gone into "

Those waiting to attend transport committee meetings would see the formidable figure of Dunwoody padding along the Westminster corridors heading for the committee room. By the time the doors were flung open to the witnesses and the public, Dunwoody and her colleagues were ready to fire questions at those giving evidence.

Fittingly for one representing the railway town of Crewe, Dunwoody was particularly interested in the railways. Bosses of such bodies as Network Rail, the Office of Rail Regulation and passenger train companies all felt the lash of her tongue during evidence sessions.

While she could be charming herself, Ms Dunwoody had little time for those trying to blind her with words or science. Being "old Labour", she could also get exasperated at the style and jargon of the current crop of Labour ministers.

In 2001 she survived an attempt by Labour whips to remove her from the committee - which under her chairmanship often produced highly critical reports.

Backbench Labour MPs refused to support the move when it went to a vote in the Commons.

More recently, Dunwoody fought with Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, for the return to the UK of the original AA Milne Christopher Robin dolls, which were on display in a New York museum.

A keen collector of teddy bears - she was also a theatregoer and enjoyed opera - she raised the matter in the House of Commons, and then she and Mr Giuliani traded insults across the Atlantic. Even President Bill Clinton commented on the issue during a White House press conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair. The story was splashed in the New York Post and the New York Daily News, both of which passed unflattering comments about Mrs Dunwoody.

Her late husband, John Dunwoody, was a Labour MP from 1966 until 1970 and their daughter, Tamsin Dunwoody, was a member of the National Assembly for Wales between 2003 and 2007. She also had two sons and 10 grandchildren.