Jane Dodds is standing down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats after nine years, telling members the job of rebuilding the party “should be led by a new generation”.
She stays on as the Member of the Senedd for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, the party’s only seat in Cardiff Bay. “I am not going anywhere,” she said.
A new leader is due by 16 November, and Dodds said party president Tim Sly would write to members “in the coming days” with the timetable. Only the party’s MPs and MSs can stand under its current rules, which leaves David Chadwick, the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, as the only eligible candidate.
Chadwick is not saying yet whether he wants the job.
“There will understandably be questions about what comes next. Today should be about Jane and her contribution to our party. I will make a statement about my own political future in the coming days,” he said.
‘I don’t want to be the only one after the next election’: why Dodds is going now
“Leading this party has been the honour of my life,” Dodds wrote to members. “I believe that work should be led by a new generation, and that the right time to hand over is now, while there is time to build.”
“Once again, I am our party’s only Member of the Senedd. I don’t want to be the only one after the next election,” she said. “Wales needs a team of liberal voices in the Senedd, and that means starting now.”
Of May’s election, she said: “If I’m honest, it wasn’t the result we worked so hard for.” Reform UK took three of the six Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd seats, Plaid Cymru two and Dodds the sixth, with Labour getting none.
Across Wales the Lib Dems stayed on a single seat. Dodds has sat in the Senedd since 2021, first for Mid and West Wales, after winning the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election in 2019 and losing the seat that December.
“When I became leader, Theresa May was Prime Minister and Carwyn Jones was First Minister. Six Prime Ministers and five First Ministers later, I hope I have given our party something steady to build on,” she said.
‘One child growing up in poverty is one too many’: the fight Dodds says she is staying for
“I spent 27 years as a child protection social worker. I saw what poverty does to children, and I have never been able to accept it,” Dodds said. “One child growing up in poverty is one too many.”
“Today, more than 200,000 children in Wales, almost one in three, are growing up poor,” she said. The Plaid Cymru Welsh Government “has promised to put child poverty at the heart of everything it does. I will hold them to that promise every single day”.
Her Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd neighbour Sioned Williams, Plaid’s Deputy First Minister, pledged an immediate focus on childcare and child poverty when the cabinet was named in May.
“I want the time and space in order to focus on that,” Dodds told ITV Wales, which reported that she intends to stand for the Senedd again in 2030.
The £1 bus fare, childcare money and the Ystradgynlais hospital fight: what one Lib Dem vote bought
With one seat, Dodds traded her vote on Labour budgets for policy. “With just one voice in the Senedd, we used our budget deal to win real money for childcare, for families who were desperate for it,” she said.
The £1 bus fare for under-22s came out of a £100m Labour and Lib Dem budget agreement she negotiated. That ticket has now carried more than nine million journeys and runs until March 2027.
Closer to home, she and Chadwick have led the campaign over beds at Ystradgynlais Community Hospital, and this month she took a 9,700-signature petition to First Minister’s Questions.
“And when others wanted Wales to turn its back on refugees, we stood up, loudly and proudly, for Wales as a Nation of Sanctuary,” she said. “None of that happened because of me. It happened because of you: the leaflets, the doorsteps, the phone banks, the wet Saturday mornings.”
Chadwick pointed to the gains made on her watch. “In 2022, we gained council seats in Wales for the first time in a decade, and at the 2024 General Election we re-established Welsh Liberal Democrat representation at Westminster,” he said.
“Jane has led the Welsh Liberal Democrats through an incredibly difficult period for both our party and Welsh politics, and she has done so with determination and resilience,” he said. “On a personal level, I am particularly grateful for everything Jane has done alongside me in Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe.”
UK party leader Ed Davey said she “secured big wins on social care, childcare, bus services and protecting rivers”. Her single vote still counts: Plaid governs as a minority, and the Senedd votes again on its budget on 3 November, two weeks before the Lib Dems’ leadership deadline.
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