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.[citation needed]
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,[6] saying she was "hopeful of a new role combining my love of campaigning with a slightly less hectic lifestyle."[7] Nigel Howells, her Liberal Democrat successor, was narrowly defeated by Jenny Rathbone.[8]
Baroness Randerson is the first female Welsh Liberal Democrat to hold ministerial office at Westminster and the first Welsh Liberal to hold a ministerial post since Gwilym Lloyd-George in 1945.
Personal life
In the early 1970, when a teacher at Spalding High School, Lincolnshire, she 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.[12][13] He played the violin[14][15] Her husband was later an Ecology lecturer at University of Wales College Cardiff, in the 1990s,[16][17] which became Cardiff University.[18]
