William Thomas Rodgers was born in Liverpool on 28 October 1928. He was educated at Sudley Road Council School, Quarry Bank High School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He married Silvia Szulman in 1955.
Rodgers joined the Labour party when he was 18 years old. At 22 he took a job with the Fabian Society. After unsuccessfully contesting the 1957 Bristol by-election for the party he became a St Marylebone Borough Councillor. He entered Parliament after winning the 1962 by-election in Stockton-on-Tees, and held positions in the Treasury and the Foreign Office before he became Minister of State at the old Board of Trade (1968-69). When Labour returned to government in 1974, Rodgers became the Minister of State at Defence until 1976 when he entered the cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport.
In 1981, as a result of Labour’s move to the left, Rodgers left the party with Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins and David Owen to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He lost his seat in the 1983 General Election. He became the vice-president of the SDP. In 1987, after the merger of the SDP and the Liberal Party, he was defeated as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Milton Keynes. He subsequently became Director General of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 1992 he was made a life peer, as Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, and led the Liberal Democrats in the Lords from 1997 to 2001.