25 Facts About 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.

Brian Abel-Smith was born at 24 Kensington Court Gardens, London, the younger son of Brigadier-General Lionel Brian Abel-Smith, and his wife, Genevieve Lilac, nee Walsh .

Brian Abel-Smith was educated at Hordle House Preparatory School and Haileybury College, before entering the army for his National Service.

Brian Abel-Smith entered Clare College, Cambridge, in 1948, graduating with an upper second in Economics in 1951.

Brian Abel-Smith was an active member of the Cambridge Union and the University Labour Club.

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Brian Abel-Smith remained at Cambridge to study for a PhD under the supervision of the economist Joan Robinson.

Brian Abel-Smith 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.

Brian Abel-Smith was promoted to lecturer in 1957, reader in social administration in 1961, and full professor in 1965.

Brian Abel-Smith focused on the impact of the new post-war British welfare state, publishing regular articles and books in the academic and mainstream press to highlight persistent inequalities in health and social welfare that Beveridge's model had not adequately addressed.

Brian Abel-Smith collaborated with the sociologist Peter Townsend – who moved to work with Titmuss at the LSE in 1957 – on projects on poverty, pensions and social security.

Brian Abel-Smith produced the first comparative classifications, which became the standard for reporting health care expenditure.

Brian Abel-Smith gained first-hand experience of the British NHS through his appointment as a governor to a number of regional boards and London hospital management committees in the 1960s, including St Thomas' hospital.

Brian Abel-Smith 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.

When Crossman was appointed as Secretary of State for Social Services in 1968 he invited Brian Abel-Smith to become his part-time adviser, one of the first such posts in British government.

Brian Abel-Smith advised issues including the re-structuring of the NHS and helped to set up an enquiry into the Ely Hospital scandal in Cardiff.

When Labour lost the 1970 general election Crossman wrote in his diary that Brian Abel-Smith "has been my closest personal friend and without him I could have done very little in the past two years".

When Labour returned to government in 1974 Brian Abel-Smith was re-appointed as a special adviser by the new Secretary of State for Social Services, Barbara Castle.

Brian Abel-Smith helped her, and her successor David Ennals, to introduce a new pensions scheme [SERPS]; set up the Resource Allocation Working Party [RAWP] to allocate NHS resources to regions according to health needs, and to set up the Black Report into inequalities in health.

Brian Abel-Smith's book with Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts, 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.

Brian Abel-Smith served on Citizens Advice Bureau committees and in 1973 he co-wrote with Michael Zander Legal Problems and the Citizen.

Parallel to his academic post at LSE and his appointments as special adviser to Labour governments, Brian Abel-Smith regularly worked as a freelance consultant for international organisations, including the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and the World Bank.

Brian Abel-Smith continued to advocate policies based on socialist and egalitarian principles, which increasingly brought him into conflict with staff at the World Bank, whose neo-liberal ideology seemed to threaten core values of risk sharing and social capital in health and social welfare systems.

Brian Abel-Smith met his partner, the actor and landscape gardener John Sarbutt, in 1960.

Brian Abel-Smith was a fine cook and raconteur, and enjoyed skiing and swimming.

Brian Abel-Smith died of carcinoma of the pancreas at his home in London, 10 Denbigh Street, Westminster, on 4 April 1996.

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