Leighton Andrews

Leighton Andrews (born 11 August 1957) is an academic and former Welsh Labour politician.

Andrews was an active Liberal Party member in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was a sabbatical officer in the students union at Bangor in 1978.

He was elected as a Union of Liberal Students member of the National Union of Students (NUS) executive in 1979 and stood as the Liberal Alliance candidate for Gillingham in the 1987 General Election at the age of 29.

Mark Perryman, Lawrence and Wishart, 1996, 'Too important to leave to the Politicians' in The Road to the National Assembly for Wales, ed J.Barry Jones and Denis Balsom, 'The Breakdown of Tom Nairn', in Gordon Brown: Bard of Britishness, edited by John Osmond, IWA, 2006, and the Labour chapter in Welsh Politics Come of Age: Responses to the Richard Commission edited by John Osmond, IWA, 2004,

On returning to Wales to live in 1996 he was appointed to the board of Tai Cymru – Housing for Wales by the Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, William Hague.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of Westminster from 1997 to 2002; and has been an Honorary Professor at Cardiff University since 2004.

He was co-founder of the Yes for Wales campaign for the 1997 Welsh devolution referendum.

During the referendum campaign he produced a paper with Gareth Hughes, then of the Welsh Federation of Housing Associations (now known as Community Housing Cymru) and now of ITV Wales, arguing that savings could be found to liberate more funding for housing from the Government's proposal to abolish Tai Cymru as part of the devolution settlement.

He joined the Labour Party following the successful referendum campaign for a Welsh Assembly.

He is the author of Wales Says Yes, a history of that campaign.

He is a published academic, whose peer-reviewed articles and chapters include The National Assembly for Wales and broadcasting policy, 1999–2003 Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 28, No. 2, 191–210 (2006); Wales and the UK’s Communications Legislation 2002–2003, Cyfrwng 2005, and Spin: from tactic to tabloid, Journal of Public Affairs, Volume 6, Issue 1, Date: February 2006, Pages: 31–45 and the chapter 'Lobbying for a new BBC Charter' in The Handbook of Public Affairs edited by Phil Harris and Craig Fleischer, Sage, 2006.

He has written three books, Wales Says Yes (Seren, 1999), Ministering to Education (Parthian, 2014) and Facebook, the Media and Democracy (Routledge, 2019).

In 2002 Andrews was selected to fight Rhondda for Labour, after the party's shock defeat to Plaid Cymru's Geraint Davies at the 1999 Assembly election.

Andrews retook the seat, with the highest increase in Labour's vote of any constituency in Wales (+21.1%) and its highest constituency vote.

He was the National Assembly for Wales member for Rhondda from 2003 until 2016.

In his first term as an Assembly Member, he sat on the Economic Development and Transport Committee (later called the Enterprise, Innovation and Networks Committee) (January 2005 – April 2007); Audit Committee (June 2003 – April 2007); Culture, Welsh Language and Sport Committee (June 2003 – November 2005); and Education and Lifelong Learning Committee (June 2003 – January 2005).

Andrews was appointed to the Welsh Assembly Government on 31 May 2007, as a Deputy Minister for Social Justice and Public Service Delivery, with special responsibility for housing.

His speech in the Assembly on 27 June set out the broad thrust of the housing agenda which was to form the policy of the new coalition government.

On 19 July 2007 he was appointed as Deputy Minister for Regeneration in the coalition government, where he led the Heads of the Valleys and Mon a Menai programmes, and launched several Strategic Regeneration Areas across Wales.

He was also responsible for digital inclusion.

In the autumn of 2009 he was campaign manager for Carwyn Jones' successful campaign to become Welsh Labour Leader.

Jones's election to the post was announced on 1 December.

Following Carwyn Jones's election as First Minister on 8 December 2009, Andrews was appointed by Jones to the Welsh Assembly Government Cabinet on 10 December as Minister for Children, Education & Lifelong Learning.

He became Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government after the 2011 election campaign when Labour won the right to govern alone, with additional responsibility for the Welsh Language.

He set out his schools agenda in a speech in February 2011 which was intended as a response to Wales's poor showing in the 2009 PISA results.

His speech, which contained a 20-point plan, became the focus of Welsh Labour's education reforms after the May 2011 Assembly elections and his reforms have largely been continued by his successor, Huw Lewis, who was Andrews's deputy from December 2009 to May 2011.

He was Minister for Children, Education & Lifelong Learning from 2009 to 2011, then Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government until his resignation on 25 June 2013 after an alleged conflict between his own departmental policy and his active campaigning to save a school in his constituency.

On the back-benches from July 2013 to September 2014, he sat on the Communities, Equality and Local Government committee and the Health and Social Services committee.

Andrews was forced to resign as Minister in June 2013, when Carwyn Jones told him he had broken the Ministerial Code by campaigning against the closure of Pentre Primary School in his Rhondda constituency.

In September 2014 he returned to the government as Minister for Public Services.

After just over a year on the back-benches, he returned to the government on 11 September 2014 as Minister for Public Services, against a background of funding cuts and proposals from the Williams Commission for changes including extensive reform of local government boundaries.

Andrews introduced a series of reforms as Education Minister, in schools, in higher education, and student finance.

He was appointed as Professor of Practice in Public Service Leadership and Innovation, Cardiff Business School, in August 2016.

Andrews is married to Ann Beynon, formerly BT Director Wales; the couple have two children.

Since his return to academia in 2016 he has continued to publish in academic journals such as Public Administration, the International Communications Gazette and Political Quarterly.

Chapters in other books include 'New Labour, New England', in The Blair Agenda, Ed.

He left the Labour Party in 2019, attacking the party's failure to deal with anti-semitism and its attitude to Brexit under Jeremy Corbyn, but sought to rejoin in 2020, having voted Labour at the 2019 UK General Election.

Andrews was born in Cardiff, and brought up in Barry until the age of 11, when his family moved to Dorset.

He holds a BA Honours (English and History) from the University of Wales, Bangor and an MA in History from the University of Sussex.