However, the seat was surprisingly lost to the Conservative candidate Keith Best with a substantial swing. The result underlined the extent to which Hughes had built up a personal vote during his 29 years as MP for the constituency. Labour did not recapture the seat until 2001. House of Lords On 16 July 1979 he was made a life peer as Baron Cledwyn of Penrhos, of Holyhead in the Isle of Anglesey. After the death of Lord Goronwy-Roberts in July 1981, Cledwyn became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords. In November 1982 he challenged Fred Peart for the role of Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords, following dissatisfaction among leading Labour peers towards Peart's leadership. For the next decade he proved highly skilled in organizing the resources at his disposal to keep the government under scrutiny. There were only around 120 Labour peers, and a third of them were too unwell or elderly to regularly participate in debates. During this time the debates in the Lords were televised (at a time when those in the Commons were not) and this gave significant prominence to the Labour opposition in the Lords. For most of his decade as Labour leader and, as such, a member of the Shadow Cabinet, Neil Kinnock was the leader of the Labour Party and they formed a strong working relationship. Had Labour won the 1992 General Election, Kinnock would have appointed Lord Cledwyn to a Cabinet post. Labour's defeat was a great disappointment to him, as he was unable to implement his proposals to reform the institution. The leadership passed to another Welshman, Lord Richard of Ammanford. Later life During his later years, Lord Cledwyn took on a number of roles in Welsh public life. From 1976 until 1985 he was President of the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has a building named after him at Aberystwyth, which is home to the School of Business and Management. He relinquished this post in 1985 on being appointed Pro-Chancellor of the University of Wales. Over the next decade he devoted much of his time to the University's various problems, including financial challenges. In particular, he was successful in obtaining funding from the Conservative government to allow the merger of the University College at Cardiff with the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology to form what became Cardiff University.