Brian Abel-Smith

Brian Abel-Smith (6 November 1926 – 4 April 1996) was a British economist and expert adviser and one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century in shaping health and social welfare. In Britain, his research for the Guillebaud committee in 1956 proved that the NHS provided extremely good value for money and deserved more investment. From the 1960s he was one of a new breed of special advisers to Labour government ministers – helping Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle and David Ennals to reconfigure the NHS, set up RAWP, and the Black Inquiry into Health Inequalities. Internationally, he steered the development of health services in over 50 countries. He was a key WHO and EEC adviser, intimately involved in setting the agenda for global campaigns such as Health for All by the year 2000.

Abel-Smith was born at 24 Kensington Court Gardens, London, the younger son of Brigadier-General Lionel Abel-Smith (1870–1946), and his wife, Genevieve Lilac, née Walsh (1898–1980). His elder brother, Lionel Abel-Smith (1924–2011), inherited the title and estate of Lord of the Manor of Wendover, in Buckinghamshire. They were distantly related to the royal family, and friends wickedly introduced him as twenty-seventh in line to the crown.

Abel-Smith was educated at Hordle House Preparatory School (1935–39) and Haileybury College (1940–1945), before entering the army for his National Service. He was commissioned in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire light infantry in 1946 and was ADC [aide-de-camp] to Sir John Winterton, the military governor of the British zone in Austria during 1947–8. He entered Clare College, Cambridge in 1948, graduating with a II.i in Economics in 1951. He was an active member of the Cambridge Union and the University Labour Club.

Abel-Smith remained at Cambridge to study for a PhD under the supervision of the economist Joan Robinson. From 1953 he aligned his research to fit with his appointment as research assistant at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (under the supervision of Professor Richard Titmuss of the Department of Social Administration at the London School of Economics) to assist with the Guillebaud Enquiry on the cost of the National Health Service (NHS). His investigation, which demonstrated that the NHS was actually very good value for money and needed further investment, has been described as 'a minor classic of modern social analysis' [C. Webster, The Health Services Since the War Vol.1, (London, HMSO, 1988) p. 207]. He was awarded a Cambridge PhD in 1955, and in the same year Titmuss appointed him as an Assistant Lecturer in his department at the LSE. He was promoted to lecturer in 1957, reader in social administration in 1961, and full professor in 1965. He retired in 1991, but returned to work part-time with Elias Mossialos to establish the LSE Health unit.

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