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A new poll has found greater support among members of the public for improved palliative care than assisted suicide.
That is according to a poll by Whitestone Insight on behalf of Care Not Killing (CNK) released just hours before MSPs vote on whether to legalise assisted suicide in Scotland.
Based on a survey of more than 2,000 UK adults, the poll finds that for most Brits, ensuring high-quality palliative care is available for all who need it is a higher priority than making assisted suicide legal.
Just over two-thirds (67 per cent) of respondents agreed with the statement, “It is essential that high-quality hospice and/or palliative care is universally available before any assisted suicide laws are passed.” This included seven out of 10 respondents who voted Labour in 2024. By contrast, just one in six (17 per cent) disagreed with the statement.
In response to the statement, “The NHS is too stretched and under-funded to enable confidence that everyone offered an assisted suicide would be properly looked after,” six in 10 (61 per cent) agreed, rising to 64 per cent among disabled people. Just one in five (20 per cent) disagreed with the statement.
Half of those surveyed felt that introducing assisted suicide should be “set aside for the time being” and only revisited once palliative care is properly funded, rising to nearly six in 10 of current Labour supporters.
Only 44 per cent of Britons believe that legalising assisted suicide would make the UK a better place to live.
Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, said the findings strongly suggest that assisted suicide has become “even more toxic”.
“Indeed, the public do not trust the ability of an overstretched and underfunded health system to introduce assisted dying safely and want politicians to focus on fixing the broken palliative care system,” he said.
He continued: “This poll sends a clear message to Westminster – the public wants the Government to fix our failing palliative care system before even considering a dangerous change to the law.
“They rightly have a deep-seated and rational fear that our NHS cannot safely manage assisted suicide without putting vulnerable and disabled people at risk. Exactly as we have seen in the small number of other jurisdictions that have legalised assisted killing. Places where we have seen people denied everything from advanced medical treatment to basic care and supported living, but at the same time, offered an assisted death.
“The political priority must be to give patients a genuine choice through world-class hospice care, not turning doctors into executioners because fixing palliative care is too difficult and costly and the public will punish any party at the ballot box that thinks differently.”
