Polling from the UK has found that the public’s support for legalising assisted suicide or euthanasia falls to just 11 per cent once people learn what the process actually involves.
The major recent poll surveyed 5,000 people, 20 per cent of whom wrongly believe that assisted suicide – often termed assisted dying – involves hospice care, while over half told the survey they thought it included ‘life-prolongining treatment.’ Fieldwork was carried out between 6 and 11 November 2024 online on the Focaldata platform.
Whilst polling has shown that almost three quarters of Britons back changing the law, the support for doing so falls when the public are told how assisted suicide works in other countries. Four in ten of those surveyed were unable to identify what will happen if the law is changed in the UK, after a majority of MPs voted last month to pass the Bill during the first major vote on assisted suicide legislation in the House of Commons.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP behind the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, has defended it as the most ‘robust’ in the world with ‘three layers of scrutiny,’ however campaigners have pointed to the recent polling as proof that the debate has been neither long nor thorough enough for people to grasp the realities of a change in the law.
The survey of 5,033 people by Focaldata, which was commissioned by anti-assisted suicide campaign group Care Not Kill, found that prevailing concerns exist amongst the public relating to safeguards around assisted dying, even if participants back it initally.
Six in ten people surveyed last month agreed that it is ‘impossible’ to create safeguards that would prevent the vulnerable from being coerced into ending their lives, while 58 per cent are concerned that it is ‘inevitable’ that some of the most vulnerable in society, including the elderly and disabled, will feel pressured into an assisted death.
Further, the survey also found that the public overwhelmingly backs calls from several politicians, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, for the UK Government to instead prioritise palliative care.
It also found that support collapsed when people were presented with ten basic arguments against assisted suicide based on the experiences of countries like Canada where the practice is legal.
In addition, 57 per cent said they believe that, given the lower cost of assisted dying compared with palliative care, there would likely be pressure on the NHS to offer assisted dying were it to become legal.
Only 11 per cent of the public were “immune to any anti-assisted dying arguments, suggesting that large swathes of the public remain fluid in their view.”
Andrew Hawkins, the founder ComRes who now leads polling consultancy Whitestone Insight, said that while public support is “driven by compassion,” the polling shows that “the public have never really got to grips with what assisted dying means.”
“The more people learn about the process and the detail of what it actually means, the more they recoil in horror and the more you see support bleaching away,” he said.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, said:
“When members of the public hear that some countries have extended laws on assisted dying to include children under 12; that some people have felt pressure to opt for assisted suicide or euthanasia because they feel they are a burden on loved ones and how in the UK a clear majority of palliative care doctors oppose changing the law, support drastically deteriorates.”
However, previous polling from the pro-euthanasia campaign group Dignity in Dying has found that support for changing the law in the UK sits “consistently high regardless of voters’ political affiliation.”
78% of disabled respondents support making it lawful to seek assisted dying, the organisations says, while its polling has also reported that two-thirds (66%) of respondents with faith support a law change, including 69% of Christians.
The law would allow terminally ill adults in England and Wales with less than six months to live to end their lives, under certain conditions. The Commons voted by 330 to 275 in favour of the Bill last month.
It will now proceed to committee stage, where MPs can table amendments before it faces additional scrutiny and votes in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.