[3] A Labour Party Member of Parliament for Redcar from 2001 to 2010, Baird was a government minister from 2006 to 2010 and the Solicitor General for England and Wales from 2007 to 2010.
Baird was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to women and equality.
She subsequently represented similar groups opposed to nuclear-waste dumping threatened at Fulbeck in Lincolnshire (Lincolnshire Against Nuclear Dumping- LAND), at North Killingholme on Humberside (HAND) and at Bradwell (BAND) in a lengthy High Court action in 1986 before the plans were abandoned by the Conservative government shortly before the 1987 general election.
[citation needed] Baird represented a dismissed mother-to-be in an early pregnancy discrimination case (Brown v Stockton on Tees Borough Council) in the House of Lords.
[citation needed] Baird met the 6th Lord Gifford while working on the Orgreave trial[10] where her questioning of the police proved crucial to the outcome.
At the retrial Peters was acquitted of murder, the defence being that she was suffering from battered woman syndrome, at the time an undeveloped area of law and fact.
[13] She also represented Emma Humphreys on appeal, a disadvantaged young woman convicted of murdering her violent pimp when she was 17 years old.
The case drew attention to battered women who kill their violent partners and underpinned legislative changes subsequently made by the Labour Government when Baird was a minister.
[citation needed] Other high-profile cases Baird has been involved in include the representation of murderer Jane Andrews in an appeal.
[14] 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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).
Baird and Scotland oversaw the introduction of Associate Prosecutors,[41] 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.
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[43] in partnership with over 28 public private and trade bodies.
In April 2008 Richard Alderman[45] was appointed to transform the Serious Fraud Office following the highly critical De Grazia Report.
[60] Baird placed responses to domestic and sexual violence at the core of her PCC role and sought to integrate police work into a multi-agency strategic hub (MASH) where the focus is on the care for the victim.
After considering the circumstances of a rape incident in Newcastle in 2012, Baird promoted the development of new national training requirements for all door staff.
The strategy detailed a 20-point plan to tackle domestic and sexual abuse, trafficking and sex work, forced marriage, "honour crimes", harassment, stalking and female genital mutilation.
[63] As a part of Northumbria's PCC VAWG strategy in February 2015:[64] Baird's office founded a network of Workplace Domestic Violence Champions.
[69] These courts were rolled out across the country in 2005 and 2006 as part of a three-pronged initiative to provide more informed and safer hearings for Domestic Violence cases.
[70] The report found significant gaps in the system and stated that if funding was improved, SDVCs would work as was originally intended.
[72] In August 2016 Baird called for personal, social and health education (PSHE) to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum to assist in combating child abuse.
[73] In December 2016 Baird, together with Northumbria Police, launched the "Words Leave Scars Too" campaign which sought to raise awareness of emotional abuse and its impact.
[77] Her resignation letter in September 2022 accused the government of downgrading victims' interests and side-lining the role, at the same time as the criminal justice system was "in chaos".