At the
1983 general election, Baird contested the constituency of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, finishing in third place behind the victor
Alan Beith. Despite the party's landslide defeat nationally, she received an increase in the Labour vote. At the
2001 general election she was selected to contest Labour's then
ultra-safe seat of Redcar, following the retirement of the sitting MP and former
Cabinet minister,
Mo Mowlam. Baird won with 7% smaller vote than Mowlam, taking the seat with a large majority. In 2004 Baird served on a number of
select committees between 2001 and 2005 including Joint Select Committee on Human Rights 2001–2003 and the Select Committee on Work and Pensions between 2003 and 2005. Baird was re-elected at the
2005 general election with a reduction in her majority. She then became the
parliamentary private secretary to the
Home Secretary,
Charles Clarke. On 8 May 2006, she was appointed as a
parliamentary under-secretary of state for the
Department for Constitutional Affairs – which was renamed the
Ministry of Justice in May 2007, following the reorganisation of the Home Office. In June 2007, newly appointed
Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Baird
Solicitor General for England and Wales. In 2006 Baird commented that in calculating the sentence of a
sex offender the
judge had been too lenient; she retracted the comments after her boss
Lord Falconer supported the judge, saying the fault lay not with the judiciary but with sentencing guidelines. Judge Keith Cutler later suggested that criticism from ministers including Baird and
Home Secretary John Reid could force judges to break their tradition of silence when criticised. In 2009 Baird helped establish the Stern Review on the way rape cases are handled; an independent report by
Baroness Stern, it was published in March 2010 concluding that there needed to be a greater focus on victims. In the recession beginning in mid-2008 the worldwide price of steel halved over a period of 6 months, steel production worldwide reduced and in the UK the blast furnace at
Teesside Steelworks Corus was eventually shut down on 19 February 2010. The whole plant was then mothballed following the withdrawal of an international consortium that had been considering the purchase of the plant. There were over a thousand redundancies and the future of Redcar, as a steel town was undermined. A major regional campaign to save the steelworks was operating but, despite receiving praise for her own personal efforts in the campaign which had included a trip to Italy in an attempt to persuade
Marcegaglia, the leading consortium business to keep to the contract, the view was that the Labour Government had failed to save the steelworks. Baird lost her seat in the House of Commons on 7 May 2010 at the 2010 general election, with a 21.8% swing, the largest against Labour in the general election and the first time in the short history of the constituency the Labour Party had ever lost the seat in Redcar. During her time as an MP Baird was a member of both the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She delivered lectures at conferences on democracy, gender and human rights in many locations around the world and carried out election monitoring duties on nine occasions. She was a notable figure in several parliamentary campaigns including that to remove the rule where pensioners going into hospital had to surrender their pension and reapply on discharge and in another campaign that sought, successfully, to amend National Insurance and other rules – the amendments meaning that the number of women who qualified for the Basic State Pension was greatly increased. and the blocking of the partial abolition of jury trial proposed in the
Criminal Justice Act 2003 through the proposal of amendments in the Commons.
Bob Marshall-Andrews, another MP opposed to the abolition of jury trials, gave credit to Baird's efforts by stating "Saving jury trial was a singular victory and the one of which, in thirteen years at Westminster, I remain most proud. Without Vera's voice we would probably have lost and that remains, as they say, big medicine." During her time as a backbencher, Baird was involved in various activities and work outside of Parliament. She designed and delivered courses, in consecutive years, for the British Council on aspects of criminal, civil and family law firstly for Ethiopian judiciary and secondly to the
Ethiopian Police Service. She was a Fellow of the Norfolk Trust in Summer 2004, visiting
New Zealand,
South America and
East Africa to study her own topic of violence against women and, as is the obligation to the Trust, to study the chosen topics of her 3 Co-Fellows, which were HIV/AIDs, environmental issues in connection with mineral extraction and Health Service delivery. Baird was a patron of the Jubilee Debt Campaign of EVA-Women's Aid of FOCAS (autistic charity) and ROC (disabled charity). She was chair of the Fawcett Commission on Women and Criminal Justice 2002 – 2006. This latter was a seminal review of women as defendant, as victims & witnesses and as workers in the criminal justice system which triggered a number of major legislative and non-legislative changes including the Corston Review on Women with Vulnerabilities in Prison. Baroness Corston succeeded Baird as commission chair when Baird became a minister. Baird worked with MIND on strategies to make the criminal courts more responsive to people with mental illness or learning difficulties and was secretary of the
Parliamentary Labour Party Women's Committee. During her time as MP and before she became a PPS, Baird was active in the Parliamentary Committee system. She was a member of the Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee 2003–2005 : scrutinising the work of the DWP. Influential Reports included on Women and Pensions and Child Support Agency, the latter bringing the demise this failed organisation; a member of the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights 2001–2003 : joint Lords-Commons Committee scrutinising legislation for compliance with European Convention on Human Rights. Influential reports include recommending the establishment of the Equality and Human Rights Commission; a member of the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny Committee on various constitution and democracy proposals including the Corruption Bill 2003 (With others on the committee, Baird was instrumental in ensuring the rejection of the Corruption Bill, which would not have complied with international obligations); a member of the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny Committee of the Armed Forces Bill 2005–2006: The committee approved the bill with modifications, in particular about reform to the
Court Martial system; elected onto a large number of House of Commons Standing Committees (now (2012) known as General Committees, they conduct detailed scrutiny of proposed legislation) including: Export Control Bill 2002, Proceeds of Crime Bill 2002,
Criminal Justice Bill 2003,
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill 2004, Sexual Offences Bill 2003, Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill 2005, Pensions Bill 2004, Housing Bill 2004; the chair of All Party Parliamentary Groups on: Burma (jointly with
John Bercow MP), On Equalities, for Citizens Advice, on Steel Industry, on Domestic and Sexual Violence; a member of All Party Parliamentary Groups on Ethiopia, Botswana, Tanzania, Great Lakes Region, India, the Falklands, Seaside Towns, Town Centre Management, Cancer Research, Cardiac Arrest in the Young and Animal Welfare.
Solicitor General for England and Wales: 2007–2010 In June 2007 Baird became the
Solicitor General for England and Wales, the senior law officer in the House of Commons and the government's chief legal adviser and criminal justice minister, a position she held jointly with the attorney general, Baroness Scotland. As senior law officer Baird was responsible, together with the
attorney general, for the Law Office budget and for setting the strategic direction for the
Crown Prosecution Service,
Serious Fraud Office,
Service Prosecuting Authority (covering the Armed Forces)
Treasury Solicitor's Department,
Government Legal Service and Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service
Inspectorate as well as giving lead ministerial sponsorship to the
National Fraud Authority. At this time the law officers also oversaw the
Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland. A further aspect of the role of solicitor general for England and Wales is the requirement for close liaison with various police bodies including the strategic level
Association of Chief Police Officers (APCO). As a senior law officer, Baird held the responsibility, together with the attorney general, for protecting the independence of prosecutors; for providing legal advice to over 20 Whitehall departments and for taking action on contempt of court, (typically when press reporting of criminal cases may inappropriately influence their outcome). She represented the Government in court, in particular in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division on Unduly Lenient Sentence appeals, asking the Appeal Court to increase too lenient Crown Court sentences. She advised on charities law where there were disputes in which the State had an interest. The law officers advise on whether Bills are compatible with the
Human Rights Act 1998. As solicitor general, Baird – together with the attorney general – developed a
pro bono committee to focus and streamline the availability of free legal advice. They set up the Access to Justice Foundation, to hold costs from pro bono cases and changed the law to allow lawyers who have acted on a for free basis to apply for costs to be put into the fund to support the organisation for future free legal work. Baird and Scotland oversaw the introduction of Associate Prosecutors, extending the powers of less qualified prosecutors to present cases in the
magistrates' courts, to save fully qualified solicitors from the need to conduct small case, so freeing them to prepare serious work for the Crown Court. They also developed and oversaw the introduction of CPS Online, a phone line for police charging advice. With the attorney general, Baird, as sponsor minister, deployed a budget of £28 million to implement the recommendations of the 2006 Fraud Review and established the
National Fraud Authority (NFA), which became an executive agency of the Law Officers Departments (LODs) in 2008 with Dr Bernard Herdan as its chief executive. Baird was a senior member of the Inter-Ministerial Group which oversaw the NFA and the co-ordination of the UK's first National Fraud Strategy in partnership with over 28 public private and trade bodies. In April 2008, the City of London Police was established as the Lead Force on fraud, to take over complex investigations and strengthen skills and expertise in the police nationwide. In its first year took on 71 major cases involving losses to victims estimated at £1 billion. The
National Fraud Intelligence Bureau was established and Baird spoke at key events, such as the
Fraud Advisory Panel's Conference to promote co-ordinated action against fraud and in particular present a new focus on prevention and protection of what had historically and wrongly been seen as a victimless crime. In June 2007 the Law Officers approved the enhanced Digital Forensic Unit, a £1 million facility expanding the ability of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to retrieve information from computers and other devices seized in investigations. In April 2008 Richard Alderman was appointed to transform the Serious Fraud Office following the highly critical De Grazia Report. Baird and Scotland launched the Prosecutors' Convention to streamline the operations of over 40 prosecuting bodies such as the
Civil Aviation Authority,
Maritime and Coastguard Agency,
Financial Services Authority and the
Office of Fair Trading. Baird launched the Homophobic Hate Crime strategy and a Race and Religious Hate Crime strategy, with Sir
Ken Macdonald and in 2008 with the CPS launched the first public policy on cases of crime against older people. The CPS launched its first ever violence against women strategy in 2007, the first in Government and this resulted in policies on the prosecution or rape and domestic violence being updated and publicly launched. where victims informed of Government policy. She visited several joint CPS and Police Witness Care Unit s to develop the information and support for witnesses. She supported the roll-out of the Witness Intermediaries' Scheme, which provides support for witnesses with communication difficulties and the introduction of new offences to support those at risk of intimidation.
Sara Payne was appointed as the first independent Victims' Champion with a role to listen to the views and concerns of victims and witnesses, and to challenge criminal justice agencies to improve their practices.. Baird was a member of the National Criminal Justice Board which co-ordinates the agencies which collectively make up the Criminal Justice system. Here she worked with the
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the chair of the Association of Police Authorities, the Judiciary, Probation and other agencies. Baird was Ministerial sponsor of the Cleveland Local Criminal Justice Board and of the West Yorkshire LCJB.
Parliamentary expenses scandal Baird was the subject of claims in newspapers at the time of the expenses scandal but, along with those of other MPs, her claims were investigated by Sir Paul Kennedy who found that she had claimed only for payments she was entitled to receive. ==Police and Crime Commissioner==