Mike German, Baron German

Michael James German was born on 8 May 1945 in Cardiff, Wales. He was educated at St Illtyd's College before going on to study at St Mary's College London and the Open University, where he gained a degree in educational studies, and the University of the West of England, where he gained a post graduate qualification in education management. Prior to his career in politics, German worked as a music teacher and became the head of music at two schools in Cardiff. In 1986, he was teaching at Lady Mary High School in Cardiff, where he later finished his teaching career as head of music. German retired from teaching in 1990 to serve as the European director at the Welsh Joint Education Committee, where he led its unit in Europe before leaving the organisation in May 1999. In this role, he was responsible for managing student exchange programmes between Wales and other countries in Europe. He stood again at the 1979 general election, winning 13.5% behind Labour's M. D. Petrou with 36.2% and Grist with 47.3%. He stood for the constituency again in the 1987 general election, falling to third place behind Labour's Jon Owen Jones with 29.3% of the vote to his 32.3%, with Grist again winning the seat with 37.1% of the vote. He was also the director of the Welsh Liberal Party's national campaign at the election, serving in the same position for the Welsh Liberal Democrats at the 1992 and 1997 Ideologically, German is on the more liberal wing of the Liberal Democrats. == Cardiff City Council ==

In May 1983, German stood for election to Cardiff City Council as the Alliance's Liberal candidate for the ward of Cathays at the 1983 council election, a marginal ward with Labour. German campaigned on ending the council's practice of rubbish tipping, stating that it had damaged the environment, and on ending new green belt developments in areas on the outskirts of Cardiff like Pentwyn so that the council could focus more of its resources on regenerating deprived areas in the city centre. He was elected to the council with 1,742 votes, or 36.9% of the vote, alongside Alliance colleague Fred Hornblow and Labour's Derek Allinson. He was re-elected for a second term with Hornblow and Allinson at the 1987 council election with 1,992 votes, or 37.6% of the vote, and for a third term with them at the 1991 council election with 2,231 votes, or 41.7% of the vote. His wife Georgette German was also elected to the council in 1983 as a Liberal member for the ward of Plasnewydd. After his election to the council in 1983, German became leader of the three-member Liberal group in the council, which later became a four-member Alliance group later in the 1983–1987 term. After the 1983 election, German criticised the Conservative administration of Ron Watkiss for giving each of the Liberals just one seat in the council's different committees, with German occupying a seat on the land committee and his colleagues Georgette German and Fred Hornblow occupying a seat on the personnel committee and the licensing committee each. Ahead of the election, he said he thought the Alliance would win enough seats to hold the balance of power in a hung council. Following the election, German became the co-leader of the council, with his group serving in a coalition with both Labour and the Conservatives until 1991. The other co-leader of the council during this period was Alun Michael of the Labour Party, who had negotiated the coalition as Labour's chief whip in the council. German led his party, by now the Liberal Democrats, into the 1991 council election. This time, he expected his party to fall short of winning enough seats to form an administration. The campaign had a low profile, with all three governing parties making little criticism of their opponents because of their coalition in the council except for in some marginal areas. The Liberal Democrats were expected to lose some seats to Labour in Plasnewydd, though German's wife Georgette German was considered safe because of her local popularity. A close fight was expected between the two parties in Cathays, though German was not considered to be at risk, having established himself as a known national figure in the Liberal Democrats by this time. Labour regained control of the council following the election. He did not stand for election to the new council and decided to instead shift his attention toward the national structure of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. == National Assembly for Wales ==

1997 devolution referendum and 1998 leadership election In the 1990s, the Liberal Democrats campaigned with the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru for the establishment of a devolved assembly for Wales. A supporter of home rule for Wales, German led the Welsh Liberal Democrats' campaign for a Yes vote in the 1997 Welsh devolution referendum as its campaign director. When the results came through in September 1997, the majority of the Welsh public narrowly voted in favour of establishing the devolved National Assembly for Wales, with 50.3% of the vote. After the election result, German and his party called for the assembly to include more women and ethnic minority politicians than traditionally seen in UK legislatures. German said that this could be done by giving the assembly an exemption from the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 to enable it to use all-women shortlists. The first election to the National Assembly for Wales was scheduled for May 1999. By August 1998, German had become the chief spokesperson of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. In the same month, he was selected by the party to contest the assembly constituency of Caerphilly against Ron Davies, the leader of Labour in Wales who represented the same area in Westminster and was also standing for the seat. He was also made the party's top candidate on the party list for the South Wales East assembly electoral region, whose members would be elected through party-list proportional representation as in other electoral regions of the assembly. On the issue of cooperating with Labour in the 1999 Welsh local elections, German as chief spokesperson said his party would discuss certain issues with Labour where the two parties found common-ground, but stated that his party "disagree almost entirely with the way Labour runs local government in Wales". In October 1998, the party agreed to hold a leadership election to elect the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrat Group in the National Assembly ahead of its establishment in 1999 after Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives had held their own leadership elections. The elected leader would also lead the party's election campaigns in Wales. German launched his leadership bid on 12 November and was challenged by fellow assembly candidate Christine Humphreys. German was considered the favourite in the election, though only by a narrow lead. He served under federal party leaders Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell as leader in the National Assembly and Ming Campbell, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. 1999 assembly election At the 1999 National Assembly for Wales election, German led the Liberal Democrats on a platform of promoting its official party values of equality, community and liberty, which it claimed would "direct Wales into the new millennium". German launched its election manifesto on 11 April, which included commitments to focus on education, health and improved governance as its main priorities. In the manifesto, the party also pledged to cut primary school class sizes to a maximum of 30 pupils, with the aim of eventually lowering this to 25 pupils, and to cut NHS waiting times to a maximum of six months for GP referrals and medical treatment. On devolution, the party called for the assembly to gain more powers and for it to establish ties with other legislatures in the Celtic countries. German also pledged to introduce performance-related pay for members of the Welsh Cabinet, which would change depending on their performance on issues like NHS waiting times and their commitment to openness and the truth. Although opinion polls had forecast the Liberal Democrats as winning only six seats to become the third-largest party in the assembly behind Plaid Cymru and the governing Labour Party, Based on this performance, German said the party's main target was to win 15 out of the 60 seats in the assembly. He said it would focus its efforts on winning constituency seats in North Wales to meet this target, with its other seats projected to come from proportional representation regional lists. , . As predicted in opinion polls, He did however win a proportional representation top-up seat in the electoral region of South Wales East, He was re-elected with Graham and Davies at the 2003 assembly election, with Williams losing her seat to Conservative Laura Anne Jones. German, Davies and Graham were re-elected again at the 2007 assembly election, with Laura Anne Jones losing her seat to Plaid Cymru's Mohammad Asghar. In the first term of the assembly, German was a member of the Economic Development Committee and chaired the Legislation Committee. Michael and German had already led their parties into a coalition on Cardiff City Council some years earlier and had remained on good terms since then. German, keen to form a coalition with Labour, offered to enter into coalition negotiations with Michael pending the approval of his own party, and said that he would accept a coalition on the condition that Labour agreed to a written power sharing agreement, cutting primary school class sizes to under 30 pupils and cutting healthcare waiting times to under six months. At first, Michael also seemed keen to discuss a coalition with German and his party. However, the other Labour members in the assembly did not accept a coalition. Michael said he did not form a coalition because it "would have been inclusive of one party and exclusive of the others" when the new assembly had to, in his view, foster trust and cooperation between all the different parties. It is also believed that Michael concluded that the three other parties in the assembly would not be able to find enough common-ground to vote against Labour and form an alternative programme for government. German and the Liberal Democrats disapproved of Michael's decision and argued that a minority administration would not provide the stability required of a devolved government for Wales. The party also signalled that it would abstain during the nomination of the first secretary on 12 May. He announced his cabinet later that day, during the same session. His cabinet notably included the appointment of two education secretaries; Tom Middlehurst was made the assembly secretary for education and training with responsibility for post-16 education while Rosemary Butler was made the assembly secretary for education and childcare with responsibility for education up to the age of 16. German criticised Michael's decision to split these responsibilities between two different ministerial posts as "ridiculous" and said "we should be looking to [instead] provide education and training from cradle to work to retirement". German formed his first frontbench team of assembly party spokespeople the next day, appointing himself as the Welsh Liberal Democrat Group's spokesperson for economic development and European affairs in addition to his role as group leader. Despite his prior criticism, German also appointed two education spokespeople, Jenny Randerson for pre-16 education and Christine Humphreys for post-16 education, to his frontbench. In the first few months of the new institution, he voiced his disapproval for what he described as the "trivia", "personal scandal" and "petty squabbles" which had occurred in its early months. He supported Labour's Ron Davies after he came out as bisexual in June during the continuing controversy surrounding the details of his mugging at Clapham Common in 1998, and said it was a "matter for himself and nobody else [...] it is not a matter for us or any other party", though he did express his hope that this would mark an end to the controversy. In the same month, German's party was the only one that did not join an opposition party walkout from the assembly after Labour AM Lynne Neagle criticised opposition parties' policies on the European Union (EU) ahead of that month's election to the European Parliament. Conservative leader Rod Richards criticised the Liberal Democrats for failing to join the walkout, to which German said this was the first time a matter of controversy had arisen in the assembly, adding that he did not support walkouts from the assembly to deal with controversial matters. The National Assembly for Wales legally assumed its devolved powers on 1 July 1999. At the plenary session of 13 July, German put forward a motion which proposed the creation of an enterprise development bank for Wales "to channel venture capital into particular community enterprises". The business secretary Andrew Davies backed the motion after an amendment to require consultation from academics, businesses, the voluntary sector and local authorities was agreed. The motion was carried and a devolved development bank called Finance Wales was established in 2001. Over time, German established himself as an expert on the standing orders of the assembly, as exemplified by his successful motion on 3 November 1999 to make the Economic Development Committee responsible for exploring the establishment of "community investment unit to channel European Structural Funding to community enterprises" which would be part of a development bank for Wales. However, the Liberal Democrats as a whole was set back by its status as the fourth largest party in the assembly, with German becoming its only prominent representative there. This followed a Liberal Democrat consultation on rail transport in Wales in May, which according to German had returned passenger complaints on safety, train delays, discomfort in trains and expensive train fares; the party then called for the creation of a rail authority for Wales. Michael dismissed German's proposal for a transport authority and said his focus was instead on developing and introducing a transport policy for Wales. Political crisis and resignation of Alun Michael From mid-July to mid-September, the National Assembly for Wales went into summer recess. German said the assembly had to take "urgent action [...] to meet the desperate concerns of tens of thousands of families whose very livelihoods are threatened. Later that month, the assembly voted for a proposal by Gwyther to introduce a £750,000 calf processing scheme to address the crisis by awarding farmers with £20 for each calf that they processed. The scheme was dependent on permission from the European Commission, which initially said it would not block the scheme. A censure motion in Gwyther as the agriculture secretary was backed by all three opposition parties in the assembly and passed on 19 October. Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats did not back the motion and it was voted down on 2 November by Labour because of its lack of support. German said the motion acted as "a warning shot across the bows of this administration" and warned that his party would not abstain in a second confidence motion if Michael failed to meet his expectations and secure funding from the Treasury to meet the required match funding needed to receive promised EU Objective One funding for the deprived parts of Wales. As his party's spokesperson for economic development and European affairs, German developed a particular interest on the issue of Objective One, and the rest of the party in the assembly also treated the issue as a priority. As November progressed, German's Liberal Democrats started to work closer with the two other opposition parties in the assembly, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru, on the issue of Objective One funding. On 3 November, the three parties published a joint-memorandum on the issue which was co-signed by German and the economic spokespeople from the two other parties, Plaid's Phil Williams and the Conservatives' Alun Cairns. This signalled increasing cooperation between the opposition parties on the Objective One issue, by this point the main issue in the assembly. A similar proposal was drawn up by Labour AM Val Feld which entailed the formation of a government of national unity between all four parties in the assembly, but this was rejected by Michael's administration. In January, Plaid Cymru made an ultimatum to Michael in which it warned that if he did not secure an additional £85 million in funding for 2000/2001 it would table another no confidence motion at the end of the budget debate on 8 February. On 1 February, Michael proposed setting up an all-party committee whose duties would include progressing the budget. Although German welcomed this proposal, the opposition's move toward a change in leadership for the assembly had already become too strong to prevent. A no confidence motion was jointly tabled between Plaid's Ieuan Wyn Jones, German and the Conservatives' Nick Bourne for debate on 9 February. Ahead of the vote, German's party discussed negotiating a coalition or deal with Michael's administration, but it was ultimately decided that this was too unpopular a move for the party. Labour business secretary Andrew Davies had also met with German ahead of the motion, ostensibly as a representative of the majority of the Labour group, to receive assurance from him that the Liberal Democrats would not back Michael in the vote; Labour's AMs had agreed not to renominate Michael for first secretary if he lost the vote and had agreed to elect Morgan in his place. The motion of no confidence passed with the backing of all three opposition parties and Michael resigned. Labour's Rhodri Morgan was elected by the Labour administration to succeed him as first secretary. German called for a grand coalition between all four parties in the assembly to end the political deadlock between the opposition parties and the Labour minority administration. In March 2000, former Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Alex Carlile called on German to form a coalition with Labour, in a similar manner to the coalition between the two parties in Scotland, and said that while he ideally agreed with a four-party coalition he believed it would probably end in failure. During this period, German's party made preparations for a coalition, believing that such a deal may become necessary in the assembly as the year progressed. The party was initially however cautious toward fully committing to a coalition with Labour, which was unpopular in the Liberal Democrats' rural heartlands at the time. The negotiations were held to provide stability to the assembly and to stabilise Labour as the governing party following the unstable nature of the assembly over the last year and a half of its existence. On the Liberal Democrat side, the negotiations were independent from the UK party, which only offered advisers to help German during the negotiation process. Under the terms of the deal, it was agreed that German would become Morgan's deputy first secretary in the coalition, which was scheduled to last until the 2003 assembly election. Other ministerial portfolios were negotiated by German and Morgan on 15 October. Two Liberal Democrats, German and Jenny Randerson, were given cabinet posts. In early January 2001, German announced plans for a £20 million rescue package to prevent expected job losses after the steel manufacturer Corus announced it would lay off a significant number of staff at its plants in Wales. Measures in the planned package included lowered business rates for Corus plants in Wales, the purchase of surplus land from Corus, the provision of environmental incentives, support for training and research and the development of new job markets. Corus was reluctant to discuss the package with the government and a week after its publication announced it would close down its plants in Ebbw Vale and some of its plants in Llanwern. Following its announcement, Corus claimed that the government did not offer a rescue package to the organisation, a claim German denied. After Corus' announcement, the government's focus shifted to addressing the resulting job losses. In 2001, tourism in Wales had experienced a downturn as a result of that year's foot-and-mouth outbreak across Britain. German's ministerial department was tasked with reviving the industry in Wales. In March, £1 million in financial support was granted to the Wales Tourist Board to fund a marketing campaign to encourage potential holidaymakers to visit Wales. In the same month, German published a tourism charter which made recommendations to local authorities, national parks and other tourism operators on which attractions were still safe enough to open to visitors. German also implemented several other measures to deal with the outbreak, including the creation of a rural hardship fund, an extension to the Small Firms Loan Guarantee, £12 million in financial support for tax rates, free support to rural companies hit by the disease and tax deferrals for National Insurance, VAT and PAYE. Carwyn Jones, the minister for agriculture and rural affairs, also established a new rural partnership group co-chaired by himself and German to lead the government's recovery plan for rural companies once the foot-and-mouth outbreak had come to an end. In the days following German's appointment to the cabinet in October 2000, German was accused in the press of financial misconduct during his tenure at the WJEC; he was accused of having contributed to the European unit's financial deficit by overspending and misusing his expenses during his tenure there, accusations which he denied. The WJEC initiated an independent audit into the matter with its results given to the police after its completion in April 2001. and again in 2002–03 (and Minister for Rural Affairs and Wales Abroad). He stepped down from the role of Deputy First Minister between the two dates to answer allegations made about his role at the Welsh examination board, the WJEC. During this period he was temporarily replaced by Jenny Randerson as Acting Deputy First Minister. In November 2007, Mike German became leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, after Lembit Opik stood down to ensure that the leadership of the party was in the National Assembly and not Westminster. He was succeeded in 2008 by Kirsty Williams. German's political interests include skills development in small and large companies in Wales, constitutional affairs, local government, economy and regeneration. == House of Lords ==

, 2018. In Prime Minister Gordon Brown's 2010 Dissolution Honours list issued on 28 May 2010, German was nominated to serve as a working peer for life in the House of Lords for the Liberal Democrats. Elizabeth II approved his nomination and he was created Baron German, of Llanfrechfa in the County Borough of Torfaen, on 29 June 2010. In May 2010, he announced that he would stand down from the assembly to serve in the Lords. with his wife Veronica German, a Liberal Democrat councillor, succeeding him as AM for South Wales East on 1 July 2010, having been entitled to do so as the next candidate behind German on the Liberal Democrats' top-up list for that region. He said he hoped that this reform would be made by the end of the term of the recently formed UK coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in 2015, arguing that doing so would make the UK Government "much more open and honest with the people of Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom". During this period, German said he agreed with the government's principle that benefit claimants should not receive more than the average working family, but argued that its policy for a benefit cap should not cover child benefit. In November 2011, he said the cap would "punish children for the decisions of their parents" who "have little or no control over the upbringing they receive" and also suggested it could "encourage family breakdown as families split in order to get their benefit entitlement". He also expressed concern for the government's bedroom tax policy and in 2013 asked that disabled people who have to share a bedroom with cohabitants receive an exemption from the policy. However, he opposed a motion at the October 2014 Liberal Democrat Conference which would endorse the effective abolition of bedroom tax by calling for its removal for tenants of social and private housing, stating that by connecting the two sectors it could make landlords in the private sector reluctant to take on tenants who required alternative housing provision. Ahead of the roll out of the coalition's new Universal Credit scheme in 2013, German called on the government to fund landlords and housing associations so that they could provide support to their tenants through the scheme, arguing that this was necessary to make universal credit a success. From 1 June to 7 September 2015, German served as the Liberal Democrats' spokesperson for work and pensions in the House of Lords. He has served in several parliamentary committees in the Lords, including the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee from 23 June 2015 to 2 July 2019, the Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee from 13 June 2019 to 16 June 2020 and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee from 2 July 2020 to 31 January 2023. In April 2020, he participated in a Liberal Democrat campaign in the Lords which called for the government to release low-risk prisoners to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in overcrowded prisons. In the same month, he penned an article for PoliticsHome which warned that the spread of the disease in overcrowded prisons was "a perfect storm" which could lead to a further spread throughout the rest of the prison system and in turn the wider general public. In July 2020, he led a House of Lords debate on the government's new policy of dividing prisoners into three groups, one of infected prisoners, one of prisoners who are having symptoms of COVID-19 and may be infected, and one of prisoners who were vulnerable to the disease. German said the policy was failing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and was "potentially leading to more and more inmates contracting the virus, turning prisons into an incubator for the disease", and again put forward his party's policy of releasing low-risk prisoners. During this period, German also expressed concerns for the planning law reforms being implemented by Boris Johnson's Conservative government, which he described as "deregulatory in effect" and said "could result in low-quality housing" and reduce local scrutiny of planning applications "by the back door". German was an opponent of the Rwanda asylum plan of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak's Conservative governments. In December 2023, Sunak's government put forward the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill to overrule a ruling from the Supreme Court which declared Rwanda an unsafe country for refugees, which had therefore made the plan illegal to implement. In response, German claimed that the government was removing the human rights of asylum seekers and was going down "a dangerous slippery slope", asking about the possibility of the government targeting other unfavoured groups. In January 2024, he said the legislation "treats some of the most vulnerable people in the world – people who are facing persecution, torture and fleeing for their lives – as undesirable". In the same month, he led an attempt by the 80 Liberal Democrat peers in the House of Lords to block the bill by tabling a motion which would overrule its earlier passage in the House of Commons and deny it a second reading. German said he did this because the bill, in his view, put the UK at risk by breaking international law and threatening the rule of law by ignoring the courts, and by failing to legislate for action against gangs of human smugglers and new legal and safe routes for refugees to settle in the UK. It was convention for the Lords not to overrule the Commons in this way under the terms of the long-agreed Salisbury Doctrine, however German argued that this was a rare situation where taking such a course of action to stop the bill was justified. German's motion in the Lords failed to succeed with 84 votes in favour to 206 votes against; the Labour Party in the Lords did not support Michael's motion despite opposing the bill and it passed at its second reading. == Personal life ==

, a Liberal Democrat councillor and teacher from Newport, in 2006. She worked in his assembly constituency office and succeeded him as AM for South Wales East in 2010. German married Newport teacher and Liberal Democrat councillor Veronica Watkins in 2006. She worked in his constituency office in the National Assembly for Wales and later succeeded him as AM for South Wales East after he left the assembly for the House of Lords in 2010. He can play bass, percussion and the piano. He has named BBC Radio 4 as his favourite radio station and has stated his love for Radio 4 programmes The Archers, Desert Island Discs and Today. He also listens to political programmes and the news.'' This was his second home; his main home at the time was located near Cwmbran. Following the discovery, German said he generally spent "several nights a week in Cardiff" and believed his "claims reflect the expenditure requirement to be for Assembly business", adding that they were "justified to maintain a second home in Cardiff". He also said he "underst[ood] public concern about second homes" and said he would give any profits made from the sale of his second home back to the National Assembly. He is a multilinguist and can speak English, French, Castilian and Catalan. German addressed other AMs in the latter three languages during a debate in the National Assembly for Wales in June 1999. He also started learning Welsh following his election to the National Assembly in May 1999. He took part in a crash programme with Monmouth AM David TC Davies over the 1999 assembly summer recess to learn the language, having last taken lessons at school in 1961. == Honours ==

In the 1996 New Year Honours, German was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire "for political and public service". In 2008, political commentator Iain Dale ranked him as number 35 on his list of the top 50 Liberal Democrat politicians for that year. He was given a life peerage in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's 2010 Dissolution Honours list . As a baron, this gave him the honorific style of The Right Honourable for life. In 2015, Wales Online ranked him as number 11 on its list of the 20 "greatest Cardiffians". ==Notes and references==

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