By Ethan Davies

A new date has been given on when a report into how Greater Manchester Police treats women and girls in custody has been named.

The so-called Baird Review was supposed to be published on 10 June — but has been delayed for a third time until after the election. It will now be published on July 18, according to deputy Greater Manchester mayor Kate Green. 

She was speaking at a meeting of the city-region's Police, Fire, and Crime Panel, where she said: "It will not have escaped your notice we did not publish that [report]. 

"We now will publish that report on July 18, 2024. We will make sure that panel members will be informed in full of the contents of the report at that time."

The review, led by Dame Vera Baird, was commissioned last summer after a series of allegations were made against GMP from multiple women who came forward to the media. The review was opened out to include other people who had been held by the force in custody.

That created the first delay, meaning the report went from a scheduled publication date of late autumn 2023 to spring 2024. 'Due diligence' checks then took longer than anticipated, meaning it was possible that the report would be ready while the mayor's office was in purdah — the period around an election where public bodies cannot make announcements.

For that reason, publication was delayed until after the May 2 election, with Kate Green naming June 10 as the latest date at the first post-election Greater Manchester Police, Fire, and Crime panel meeting on Tuesday, May 14.

purdah has got in the way again, with publication again delayed until after an election. A Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) spokesperson said last week (June 4): "This report is ready to be published but, following the recent announcement of the general election, we are again bound to pre-election restrictions. Therefore, the report will now be published after the election in July."

(GMP headquarters image by David Dixon, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0)

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