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Mark Williams (born March 24, 1966) is a British politician and the Member of Parliament for the Ceredigion constituency, a seat he gained from Plaid Cymru in 2005. He is a member of the Liberal Democrat party. He sits on the Welsh Select Affairs Committee, and in 2006 he became a Shadow Minister for Wales under Menzies Campbell.

Mark Williams is a graduate of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the University of Plymouth, and was Deputy Headteacher of a school in Llangorse near Brecon before becoming an MP.

Mark Williams was born in Hertfordshire on March 24th 1966. His mother worked as a classroom assistant, and his father ran a printing business. He has two older sisters. He attended the local village primary school and then Richard Hale Secondary School, from where he moved on to the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1984 to study politics,^[1] but it was at school during the days of the SDP-Liberal Alliance that he become involved in Liberal politics:

"I instinctively knew I wasn’t a Conservative, despite coming from a formally conservative family and the Labour Party was in perpetual decline."

Within a week of arriving in Aberystwyth, Williams became treasurer and secretary of the student group and had met local Liberal MP Geraint Howells. After graduating, he became a part-time researcher to the Liberal Peers in the House of Lords,^[1] but was determined to stay in Ceredigion and spent half the week and all Parliamentary holidays as assistant to Geraint Howells in Ceredigion until Howells lost Ceredigion in the 1992 General Election.

He then returned to student life at the teacher training college in Exmouth, part of the University of Plymouth. After securing this qualification he taught in primary schools in Penzance and Barnstable before becoming a Deputy Head teacher in Llangors School in 2000.^[1]

In February 2000, after a spell as President of Ceredigion Liberal Democrats, Williams was selected to fight the Ceredigion seat in the by-election caused by the resignation of Cynog Dafis. In that by-election the Liberals rose back into second place, and in the general election of 2001 consolidated that second, and were just 3,944 votes behind Plaid Cymru. In May 2005, 13 years after Geraint Howells had been defeated, the Liberal Democrats regained Ceredigion with Mark Williams as MP by a very narrow majority of 219 votes.^[2] Mark Williams is the first non Welsh-speaking Member of Parliament to represent the constituency since the widening of the electoral franchise in 1867.

Mark Williams and his wife Helen have four children, Eleanor, Anna, and twins Eliza and Oliver who were born December 23rd 2005. Both Mark and Helen Williams are confirmed members of the Church of England, and their children have been christened into the church.

• Mark Williams MP official site
• Mark Williams MP profile at the site of Liberal Democrats
• Mark Williams MP profile at the site of Welsh Liberal Democrats
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Mark Williams MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Mark Williams MP
• The Public Whip - Mark Williams MP voting record

1. ^ ^{a b c} Profile. Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on 2007-05-15.
2. ^ Lib Dems win Cardiff, Ceredigion. BBC News (2005-05-06). Retrieved on 2007-05-15.