Public do not support reviving assisted dying bill, poll finds

In every constituency, the majority agreed Parliament should fix the NHS and improve palliative care before considering assisted dying.

The largest public poll on assisted dying since Kim Leadbeater MP’s bill was introduced in 2024 has found that there is no mandate to revive the failed bill, which fell after it ran out of time in the House of Lords in April.

Whitestone Insight surveyed 10,222 people across Great Britain on behalf of think tank The Other Half from 7-14 May.

In every constituency, the majority of voters said they would not want their MP to support a law pushed through Parliament without full scrutiny in both the Lords and Commons.

In St Ives, the constituency of Andrew George MP, who has said that he is considering bringing back the Leadbeater bill, 64 per cent opposed the bill being pushed through without the approval of both Houses; in Leadbeater’s own constituency, Spen Valley, it was 61 per cent.

Earlier, anti-euthanasia campaigners had called for the bill to be withdrawn after a leaked policy document suggested the Labour Party already planned to introduce assisted suicide by a private member’s bill before the election even though it was not in their party manifesto, leading to allegations of abuse of parliamentary process.

Legalising assisted dying did not rank in the top five priorities of any constituency in Great Britain, the poll also found.

In every constituency, the majority agreed Parliament should fix the NHS and improve palliative care before considering assisted dying.

Just 7 per cent of voters across the country listed legalising assisted dying as a priority, and only 19 per cent believed the NHS is in a fit state to safely provide assisted dying.

Jess Asato, Labour MP for Lowestoft, said, “Two years ago, like all Labour MPs, I was elected on a manifesto focused on the priorities of people up and down the country. On improving their standard of living, fixing the NHS and rebuilding our country.

“This polling shows that this hasn’t changed. We need to be resolutely focused on why people put us in government and any distraction from our core mission squanders our political capital, and the resources, time and energy of this Labour Government. 

“We know the assisted dying bill is flawed and unsafe because the experts like the royal medical colleges and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission have told us. The last thing Labour MPs should be focusing on right now is continuing to debate this deeply divisive, flawed and risky bill.”

The majority of the public in every constituency said universal end-of-life care should be introduced before assisted suicide is legalised, the poll showed.

They also said that extra care should be taken to protect victims of domestic abuse from being coerced into an assisted death.

The founder and chief executive officer of Whitestone Insight, Andrew Hawkins, said, “In every constituency we modelled, more voters said they would not want their MP to support a law being pushed through without sufficient scrutiny, or the approval of both Houses, than said the opposite.

“Voters are effectively saying: if Parliament is dealing with a life-and-death issue, they expect Parliament to do its job properly and the polling paints a picture of an electorate that is wary of unintended consequences. It expects MPs and peers alike to scrutinise any legislation rigorously.

“The polling therefore sends a clear message to MPs: deal with the crises people are living through before reopening one of the country’s most sensitive moral debates.”

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