Jenny Randerson, Lady Randerson, who has died aged 76, was a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat politician who spent 28 years in a succession of elected posts in Wales, followed by 14 years as a life peer, including three years, 2012-15, as a junior minister in the Wales Office in the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
Randerson’s introduction to Liberal politics came through a knock on the door at her family home in Cardiff by a canvasser for Mike German, the candidate for Cardiff North at the 1979 general election. Both she and her husband, Peter, volunteered to deliver leaflets, and by 1983 she was a Cardiff city councillor.
In 1999, at the first election for the Welsh assembly (now Senedd Cymru), she was elected for the Cardiff Central constituency. She became minister for culture, sport and the Welsh language in the Liberal Democrat/Labour partnership government in Wales in 2000.
In all her leadership roles Randerson combined vision and determination with her convivial personality, all of which ensured the achievement of the Wales Millennium Centre, which opened in Cardiff Bay in 2004, with Randerson putting together its complicated financing package and dealing with location difficulties in its early stages.
Together with Rhodri Morgan, the then first minister of Wales, in 2002 Randerson set out the national action plan for a bilingual Wales as part of her department’s cultural strategy known as Iaith Pawb (“Everyone’s Language”). She also had a leading role in the introduction in 2001 of free access to museums across Wales – which increased the attendance of child visitors by 70% in its first full year and targeted non-traditional museum attenders such as minority ethnic groups.
Randerson stepped down from her Welsh parliament seat in 2011 and was then made a Liberal Democrat life peer. Within a year she was appointed junior minister in the Wales Office in the coalition government. As minister she emphasised the value of the initiative for the Wales Green Building Marketplace, which brought together government, universities, environmental champions and the building industry “to ensure that we use our energy intelligently and efficiently”.
It could come as a surprise to discover that such a forthright advocate for Wales and Welshness was born in London. When teased about this she invariably replied that she had spent many more years living in Wales than in England.
Her early years were far from straightforward: her parents divorced when she was a baby and she spent some time being brought up by grandmother. Her father was an architect and her mother an antiques dealer. Formerly Jenny Sims, she later took her stepfather’s name of Sinclair. Jenny attended Wimbledon high school and then Bedford College, London University, gaining a BA honours in history. She followed this in 1970 with a PGCE at the Institute of Education.
She married Peter Randerson in the same year, and, having taught first at Sydenham high school, took up a post at Spalding high school in Lincolnshire, near to where he worked as an ecologist. When in 1974 he took up a lectureship at Cardiff University, she took a teaching post at Llanishen high school, soon afterwards moving to Coleg Glan Hafren in Cardiff, where she lectured from 1976 to 1999 on economics and politics.
She was appointed a magistrate in 1982, serving until 1999. From 2017 she was pro chancellor of Cardiff University, taking up the position of chancellor from 2019 to 2025. She was also involved in a wide variety of local charities, including Wales Council for Deaf People, the Hepatitis C Trust, the Cardiff and Vale Youth Wind Band and the African Mothers’ Foundation.
She unsuccessfully contested Cardiff constituencies in three general elections, 1987, 1992 and 1997. She occupied a number of Liberal Democrat party posts including chair of the executive committee of Welsh Liberal Democrats, 1988-90. She stood for election in 2008 as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, being defeated by Kirsty Williams.
Randerson is survived by Peter, and their son, James, and daughter, Eleri, and three grandchildren.
• Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson, Lady Randerson, politician, born 26 May 1948; died 4 January 2025
• This article was amended on 24 January 2025. Lady Randerson was born Jenny Sims, but later took her stepfather’s surname of Sinclair. She was brought up at one stage by her grandmother, not her grandparents, as an earlier version stated.
