Conservative MP and Welsh Office minister who fought for Wales and its language
Wyn Roberts, who has died aged 83, was quintessentially Welsh, and a rare and valuable asset for the Conservative party. The MP for Conwy (1970-97), he was a frontbench spokesman on Welsh affairs, becoming minister of state at the Welsh Office (1987-94). For a decade after he entered the House of Lords in 1997, he was a frontbench spokesman on Welsh affairs there.
Wyn was born and brought up in Anglesey, where his mother was a teacher and his father a Methodist minister. A scholarship enabled him to go from Beaumaris county school to Harrow in London. When he arrived at the public school in 1944, his first language was Welsh, and although he could write English excellently he could initially speak it only with hesitation.
National service in the Intelligence Corps took him to Vienna, where he was involved in tapping a telephone cable linked to the Russians' headquarters in the city. The practice, known as Operation Silver, was later repeated in Berlin. It attracted counter-espionage, and Roberts believed he was obliquely approached, possibly through Kim Philby, to switch sides. He then won a scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he gained a degree in history. Thereafter his career lay in the media, and predominantly in Wales. He did a journalist's apprenticeship as a subeditor on the Liverpool Daily Post (1952-54) and was then a television news assistant with the BBC.
With the advent of commercial TV broadcasting, in 1957 he joined TWW (Television Wales and the West) as a producer involved with news, special events and Welsh-language programmes. In 1968 the regional franchise was transferred to Harlech TV, later HTV. Roberts resented the switch, which he attributed to successful political lobbying rather than a judgment on quality television, but the new company was keen to retain his services.
During his university days, Roberts had shown only mild interest in politics: the family tradition was vaguely Liberal. Thus the Tories were pleased to have such a well-known Welsh-speaking candidate for the election in which Edward Heath led them back into government, and he retained the seat until he retired from the Commons.
Once at Westminster, Roberts immersed himself in Welsh affairs. He started his long stint at the Welsh Office as parliamentary private secretary to the Welsh secretary, Peter Thomas, in 1970. He became an opposition frontbench spokesman for Wales alongside Nicholas Edwards in 1974. The Conservative general election victory of 1979 under Margaret Thatcher led to the appointment of Edwards, later Lord Crickhowell, as Welsh secretary, with Roberts becoming parliamentary undersecretary.
After Thatcher's third election victory, she offered the Welsh Office to Peter Walker, the great cabinet survivor of the one-nation strain of Toryism. He accepted, and it says much for Roberts's selflessness that he served loyally and conscientiously, with a promotion to minister of state, but without becoming secretary of state and a member of the cabinet. Though he lacked presence as a performer, Roberts was a shrewd politician. He could also stand his ground: a great admirer of Thatcher, he would nonetheless argue his corner with her on Welsh affairs and realised by the late 1980s how self-centred her views had become.
Roberts enjoyed his work because it covered the whole range of domestic affairs. He was sceptical about devolution, which he felt would bring more rather than better government: it was a matter on which David Cameron was still consulting him. His particular responsibilities included roads, museums and the language. The last of these was always a delicate matter, but his fluency in it was an advantage and in 1966 he was made a member of the Gorsedd of the Bards, the body of leading figures associated with the Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales. A notable point of difference with Thatcher came over the status of Welsh in the national curriculum.
Roberts was much concerned with investment in Wales and pioneered links with Baden-Württemberg and similar arrangements in Catalonia and Lombardy. He perceived that public investment and intervention were legitimate aspects of a Welsh market economy and greatly admired Walker's enthusiasm and managerial drive during his three years as Welsh secretary.
He was less than enthusiastic when the Welsh Office was headed by another Englishman, John Redwood (1993-95). His ambitions for Welsh-speaking television were initially frustrated by the home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, but the prospect of a defeat in the Lords ultimately led to the launching of S4C in 1982.
Roberts was knighted in 1990 and made a privy counsellor in 1991.
He is survived by his wife, Enid, and two of his three sons, Huw and Geraint; the third, Rhys, died in 2004.
• Ieuan Wyn Pritchard Roberts, Lord Roberts of Conwy, politician, born 10 July 1930; died 13 December 2013
• John Biffen died in 2007