More Brits want higher palliative care over assisted suicide – poll

A latest poll has found greater support amongst members of the general public for improved palliative care than assisted suicide. 

That is in accordance with 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 greater than 2,000 UK adults, the poll finds that for many Brits, ensuring high-quality palliative care is accessible for all who need it’s the next priority than making assisted suicide legal. 

Just over two-thirds (67 per cent) of respondents agreed with the statement, “It is important 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, only one in six (17 per cent) disagreed with the statement. 

In response to the statement, “The NHS is just too stretched and under-funded to enable confidence that everybody offered an assisted suicide can be properly taken care of,” six in 10 (61 per cent) agreed, rising to 64 per cent amongst disabled people. Just one in five (20 per cent) disagreed with the statement. 

Half of those surveyed felt that introducing assisted suicide ought to be “put aside in the interim” and only revisited once palliative care is correctly funded, rising to just about six in 10 of current Labour supporters.

Only 44 per cent of Britons consider that legalising assisted suicide would make the UK a greater place to live. 

Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing, said the findings strongly suggest that assisted suicide has turn out to be “much more toxic”.

“Indeed, the general public don’t trust the flexibility of an overstretched and underfunded health system to introduce assisted dying safely and need politicians to give attention to fixing the broken palliative care system,” he said. 

He continued: “This poll sends a transparent message to Westminster – the general public wants the Government to repair 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 in danger. Exactly as we now have seen within the small variety of other jurisdictions which have legalised assisted killing. Places where we now have seen people denied the whole lot from advanced medical treatment to basic care and supported living, but at the identical time, offered an assisted death.

“The political priority should be to provide patients a real selection through world-class hospice care, not turning doctors into executioners because fixing palliative care is just too difficult and dear and the general public will punish any party on the ballot box that thinks otherwise.”