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.

[citation needed] 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.

[citation needed] 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 Oxfordshire 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.

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.

He collaborated with Archie Cochrane in the early 1970s, resulting in his classic book Value for Money in the Health Services (1976), which explored strategies for cost containment, effectiveness and efficiency.

As his experience through advising developing countries increased, he moved away from his ideological commitment to fully state-funded services, and embraced the concept of social insurance and, in the 1990s, the potential offered by user charges.

He began political campaigning, but when he was offered the nomination for Dalton's safe seat in 1957 he turned it down, worried that if his homosexuality were revealed that it would cause embarrassment for his family.

In 1978, frustrated with tensions between the government, NHS and the medical profession, he accepted an offer to work as special adviser to Peter Shore, Secretary of State for the Environment, where he tackled housing and urban planning issues.

After the defeat of Labour at the 1979 general election, Abel-Smith was asked by a number of health policy think thanks including the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Trust to advise on reforming aspects of British healthcare.

His book with Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts (1967), was a sociological study of the English legal system from 1750 to 1965 which showed its social origins and mode of control and helped to make an unanswerable case for root-and-branch modernisation.

He worked closely with the Commissioner Henk Vredeling on establishing European standards for healthcare and social welfare, especially on controlling costs of pharmaceuticals.

In the early 1980s he was appointed to lead the European response to the WHO global initiative Health for All by the Year 2000, and in 1984 he accepted an invitation from Halfdan Mahler, Director General of WHO, to become his personal adviser.