Lords tribute to 'Welsh ambassador'

Lord Cledwyn remembered as "a shrewd and affable MP"

The House of Lords has been hearing tributes to the former Welsh Secretary, Lord Cledwyn, who died last week.

Lady Jay, the leader of the Lords, said Lord Cledwyn was loved throughout Wales.

She read a tribute from her father, Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, who said Lord Cledwyn's was a life well spent.

Baroness Jay lead the tributes

The leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, said that although Lord Cledwyn had been delighted by Labour's general election victory four years ago, some of the Labour Party's re-packaging had passed him by.

He said that Wales had lost a great ambassador.

An MP for Anglesey for 28 years until retiring in 1979, Cledwyn Hughes served as Secretary of State for Wales in the 1966 - the year of the Aberfan disaster - having succeeded James Griffiths.

He had a vision, that indefinable quality of being years ahead of his time. That vision was realised with the establishment of the National Assembly for Wales

First Minister Rhodri Morgan

"Cledwyn Hughes will be remembered as one of the most distinguished Welshmen of the second half of the twentieth century, " said Welsh Assembly First Minister Rhodri Morgan.

Lord Cledwyn - who served as leader of the opposition in the House of Lords for a decade during the Thatcher years - said he had been "deeply moved" by the generosity of Cardiff.

Remembered as a a "shrewd and affable politician", he supported devolution at the 1979 referendum and often encountered hostility from fellow party members.

Lord Cledwyn as Welsh Secretary in the 1960s

He was born in Holyhead, Anglesey, on 14 September 1916, the son of Reverend David Hughes.

Educated at Holyhead Grammar School, he went on to graduate from the University College of Wales before embarking on a career as a solicitor.

He practised law in Anglesey from 1946, having served in the RAF during the war.

Five years later in 1951, he was elected MP for Anglesey.

Shortly before the 1979 general election, Hughes announced he would not be fighting a Commons seat again. He was made a life peer the following year.

A new chapter had opened on a distinguished career which had seen him become Welsh Secretary in 1966 as well as minister for commonwealth relations, as agriculture minister and was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 1974 until 1979.

Married with two children, Lord Cledwyn, a Welsh speaker, was a keen supporter of eisteddfodau and had been an active sportsman.