Female MPs: ones David Cameron should watch in 2013 Rachel Reeves Labour's shadow chief secretary to the Treasury will have a lot on her plate in the next twelve months. Apart from the small matter of giving birth to her first child in March, her party is also pregnant with expectation about what she can achieve when she returns to work. The former Bank of England economist has been talked about for a while as Labour's first female leader. She'll have to be tried and tested much more before that becomes a realistic possibility. But first, once she's fixed some childcare, she's got the chance to land a real blow on the government over its economic policy, and - if Ed Balls will let her - restore public confidence in what Labour's got to say on the economy. Andrea Leadsom Of course it's possible Tory MP Andrea Leadsom is the politician Treasury ministers have most to fear from. At the Treasury select committee she torpedoed Bob Diamond, aided and abetted by her knowledge as a former banker. She's a fearless inquisitor, and not afraid to take on her own party bosses too. She co-founded the Fresh Start Group - giving the Tories some pointers about how to repatriate powers from Europe. And she's also set up a charity to help mums in the early years. All that as a working mum herself. One to watch. Jo Swinson In a party not well-endowed with women, one Lib Dem stands out: Jo Swinson (Minister for Women and Equalities, and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Employment Relations and Consumer Affairs). The party's youngest MP is now their youngest minister (so young in fact that she admits the coppers in Westminster sometimes ask her if she's really an MP). She's already acquired a reputation as a politician who's more collegiate than tribal - a refreshing change when so much of politics still seems dominated by insults hurled across the despatch box. She's won plaudits by campaigning on issues like body image. And with only seven women on the Lib Dem benches (down from nine before the 2010 election) she's likely to be deployed to great effect as the 2015 poll approaches. Stella Creasy If Jo Swinson has to show her parliamentary pass to the police, her Labour colleague Stella Creasy has to put up with a Tory minister refusing to let her use a members-only lift because he thought she looked "too young" to be an MP. She's actually in her mid-thirties - plenty old enough to have cut her teeth as a formidable campaigner against payday loans. Largely thanks to her efforts, the government has agreed to cap the amount people can borrow from payday lenders. An unabashed feminist (she recently had a go at the Tories for failing to get rid of 'Top Totty' beer in one of the Commons bars) she winds some of her opponents up by being a little too earnest - a trait which has earned her the Westminster nickname St Ella. But earnestness could be a bonus this coming year if Ms Creasy alights on another cause as important as payday lending.