A
local party activist, he was a founder member of the Avon Liberal Democrats and was elected as a
Councillor on
Avon County Council in 1981 for
Cabot Ward, and was the
SDP–Liberal Alliance Group Leader from 1981 to 1986. He also served as the county's education committee chairman, and remained a Councillor until 1989. He unsuccessfully contested
Bristol East at the
1987 general election where he finished in third place, 11,659 votes behind the
Conservative Jonathan Sayeed. He was first elected in the constituency of Bath at the
1992 general election when he defeated then-
Conservative Party Chairman,
Chris Patten with a majority of 3,768. In his
maiden speech on 12 May 1992, Foster spoke of the
World Heritage Site status of
Bath and sent his best wishes to Patten in Hong Kong. In
Parliament, Foster was the Liberal Democrat Spokesman for
Education under the leadership of
Paddy Ashdown in 1992, in which capacity he served until 1999. In December 2010, in response to a call from the Football Supporters' Federation, he introduced a Bill in Parliament for English and Welsh football
safe standing areas, the first of its kind since the
Taylor Report. Having been sworn of the
Privy Council in 2010, in September 2012 Foster was appointed
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Communities and Local Government before being promoted in October 2013 as Government Deputy Chief Whip representing the Liberal Democrats in the
Coalition. In January 2014, Foster announced he would stand down as an MP at the
following general election. He was created
Baron Foster of Bath, of Bath in the County of Somerset, in the
2015 Dissolution Honours, becoming a member of the
House of Lords. His
Bath constituency was won by the Conservatives at the
2015 general election and regained by the Liberal Democrats in 2017. ==Personal life==