Vera Baird

Labour MP Redcar

Date of birth

13 February 1951

Political profile

Like many other MPs, Vera Baird is a barrister. Like a few other MPs, she is a QC.

Few other MPs, however, have had quite such a high profile legal career before their entry to Parliament.

As a member of the chambers of Michael Mansfield, Ms Baird has taken a part in some of the key civil liberties cases in recent years.

She successfully represented the women accused of criminal damage of Hawk jets waiting to be sold to Indonesia and also took part in the case following an attack on the Trident nuclear submarine.

She became a barrister after graduating from Newcastle Polytechnic, where she was active in student politics at the same time as Jack Straw was president of the NUS.

Having come from a working class background in Oldham via grammar school, she is committed to free education and has said that she would like to see an end to tuition fees at universities.

A lot of her pre-election work focused around legal issues; as a leading member of Women for Justice she was involved in reforms of the laws surrounding rape.

However, she is also very interested in reform of workplace law, especially as it effects women.

She is, perhaps unusually in the modern Parliamentary Labour Party, unafraid to embrace both the values and the language of the traditional Left.

Contact

[e-mail]

Constituency office 01642 456282