Half of Britons fear the timing of a proposed assisted suicide law that comes while benefits are being cut, a poll commissioned by SPUC has revealed.
Over 2,000 Britons were surveyed by Whitestone Insight on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) ahead of two key votes on assisted suicide.
51 per cent of polled adults said they “would be worried about the timing” of such an assisted suicide law being introduced as benefits are being cut.
Almost 6 in 10 also thought that there could be no safeguard against medics who would abuse such a law for their “own gratification”.
SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “This polling clearly shows the public has a much better understanding of the problems with changing the law than some proponents of the bill believe.
“Indeed, the public know that legalising assisted dying at the same time as slashing benefits, will create a perfect storm, putting pressure of vulnerable and disabled people to end their lives prematurely – and they don’t like it.”
On Friday 16 May, MPs are set to debate and vote on Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which proposes to legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales for terminally ill adults given six months to live.
A similar bill for Scotland will also be voted on tomorrow (12 May).
Another recent poll found that 56 per cent of the British public fear it is likely that people would opt for assisted suicide because they believe they are a burden, if it is made legal.
Two-thirds of poll respondents believed that there would be a higher risk of elderly people being pressured into assisted suicide.
The Salvation Army, which commissioned the poll, said it revealed “a deep unease about how such [assisted suicide] legislation could expose the most vulnerable to harm, coercion, or abandonment”.
A 2024 poll conducted by Whitestone Insight found that 43 per cent of British adults feared that the NHS would be incentivised by assisted suicide to influence patients to take their own lives because of financial pressures.
SPUC’s Daniel Frampton, Editorial Officer, stated in a blog post last year that “the public is waking up to the utilitarian compulsion to put many of them into a premature grave…
“This nagging sense that the British state wouldn’t mind if certain people, especially the old and infirm, would die for the sake of budgetary responsibility is increasingly present in the minds of the public.”
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