Brian Abel-Smith

Brian Abel-Smith 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 Resource Allocation Working Party, 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.