# Jenny Randerson, Baroness Randerson

Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson, Baroness Randerson (26 May 1948 – 4 January 2025) was a Welsh Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords. She was a junior minister in the Wales Office serving in the Cameron–Clegg coalition. Prior to her peerage she was an Assembly Member for Cardiff Central from 1999 to 2011 when she served in the Welsh Labour-Lib Dem administration of the 2000–2003 Welsh Assembly Government.
Randerson was also a Cardiff councillor for Cyncoed. In 2019 she was appointed Chancellor of Cardiff University.

## Early life and education

Randerson was educated at Bedford College, University of London (BA History), now part of Royal Holloway, University of London. She was a Cardiff councillor (1983–2000) and was a lecturer at Cardiff Tertiary College. She led the official opposition on the Council in Cardiff for four years. She introduced "Creative Future", a culture strategy for Wales and "Iaith Pawb", a strategy for the promulgation of the Welsh language.

## National Assembly for Wales

Randerson was elected as Assembly Member for Cardiff Central at the 1999 Assembly Elections beating the Labour candidate Mark Drakeford. She served as Minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language in the Liberal Democrat/Labour Partnership Government from 2000 to 2003. She was acting Welsh Deputy First Minister from 6 July 2001 to 13 June 2002. She was Health and Social Services; Equal Opportunities and Finance Spokeswoman for the Welsh Liberal Democrats during the Second Assembly. She chaired Assembly Business and Standing Orders Committees during the Second Assembly.
Randerson stood for the leadership of the Welsh Liberal Democrats in 2008 but was defeated by Kirsty Williams who gained 60% to Randerson's 40% of the all member ballot. In the third Assembly, Randerson was the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on Education, Transport and the Economy. She did not seek re-election at the 2011 Assembly elections, saying she was "hopeful of a new role combining my love of campaigning with a slightly less hectic lifestyle." Nigel Howells, her Liberal Democrat successor, was narrowly defeated by Jenny Rathbone.

## House of Lords

On 27 January 2011, Randerson was created a life peer as Baroness Randerson, of Roath Park in the City of Cardiff and was introduced in the House of Lords on 31 January 2011, and sat on the Liberal Democrat benches. On 4 September 2012, she was appointed a Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Wales Office.
Randerson was the first Welsh Liberal to hold a ministerial post since Gwilym Lloyd-George in 1945 and the first Welsh Liberal Democrat woman to hold ministerial office at Westminster.

## Personal life and death

In the early 1970, when a teacher at Spalding High School, Lincolnshire, Randerson lived on Guys Head Road in Lutton Marsh with her 25-year-old husband Peter, who worked for Nature Conservancy. He studied salt marshes and mudflats. He worked at the Coastal Ecology Research Station in Norwich. He played the violin. Her husband was later an ecology lecturer at University of Wales College, Cardiff, in the 1990s, which became Cardiff University.
Randerson died in Cardiff on 4 January 2025, at the age of 76. Following her death, First Minister of Wales, Eluned Morgan described Randerson as "committed to public service, to Wales and devolution." Randerson's funeral was held on 10 February 2025 in the National Museum of Wales and was attended by over 400 mourners. Eulogies were delivered by Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff and former Deputy Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Simon Hughes.