That Consensus Is No More

On 27 February, I wrote,“The Assisted Suicide Bill in England and Wales is effectively dead, David Lammy has always been opposed to it, and it is within his power to refuse Royal Assent to the comparable legislation in Jersey and in the Isle of Man. He should do so. As with the closure of all tax havens in the British Overseas Territories and in the Crown Dependencies, anywhere that did not like it would be free to become independent.” Today, Lammy did so in the Manx case. Thank God for that. And for this, of which James Johnson writes:

Five years ago, I spent several evenings traversing England talking about death. Over more than 15 hours of focus groups, I explored every facet of the public’s attitudes to assisted dying.

I remember the conversations vividly. One woman spoke movingly of how her 25-year-old daughter died painfully of cancer in a hospice. A Conservative pensioner championed the policy on the grounds of personal choice. A businessman talked of the unfairness that other countries were moving towards a solution while Britain was not.

The polling backed it up, including that by my own firm. I wrote then, in 2021: “JL Partners’ research found very significant support… for assisted dying, by a margin of 72 per cent supporting and only 9 per cent opposing. In the context of policies I’ve tested over the years, that is a very significant margin – and it is even larger amongst Conservative voters. We also found that voters are persuaded of the effectiveness of the safeguards built into the proposed assisted dying laws, and that ultimately the vast majority of people see this as a matter of personal choice.”

My view was that the assisted dying proposal then – enabling people of sound mind, terminally ill with less than six months to live, signed off by two doctors and a High Court judge, to choose to end their own lives with specific medication – had the support of the British public to become law.

I now take the opposite view. As the proposal stands in 2026, there is not public consent for its passage. The public has not changed: it remains supportive of the principle of assisted dying. It is the shape of the policy that has altered and, when informed about what it looks like now, the British voter wants nothing to do with it.

The current Leadbeater Bill does not require a High Court judge to approve a decision after receiving a declaration countersigned by two doctors. Instead, it rests on a voluntary assisted dying commissioner and an assisted dying review panel consisting of a legal member, a psychiatrist member, and a social worker member. Once written into law, experts say the safeguards read more like statements of intent than rigorous means to detect and minimise coercion or family pressure.

Polling by JL Partners this week shows the reaction. Though the public continues to support the principle of assisted dying, there are deep reservations when information is put to them about the Bill as it is today.

Two in three of those who back assisted dying in principle want to see more safeguards for terminally ill people. Three in four (72 per cent) say it is more important to strictly define the eligibility of assisted dying than to continue with the changes. Nearly eight in ten – 78 per cent – say someone must explicitly be offered other options like hospice or palliative care before proceeding. Only 18 per cent say that people should be able to request assisted dying shortly after receiving a serious diagnosis, without a sustained period of assessment.

By a margin of 79 percentage points, they want the process to be directly supervised by a qualified physician. By a margin of 59 percentage points, they want the Bill to force the informing of family members. By overwhelming margins, people think a vast array of people currently eligible under the Bill should not be: pregnant women (82 points), people with eating disorders (74 points), people with mental health issues (74 points), people expressing suicidal thoughts (74 points), and homeless people (72 points).

The only version of assisted dying with anything near the levels of support seen in 2021 is one limited to those terminally ill people experiencing unbearable physical pain – not a requirement of the Bill. The public only support a Bill unrecognisable from its current state.

That will not stop people continuing to trot out polls purporting to show it has the public’s backing. Some exploit public misunderstanding to assert that support is higher than it looks by merely polling the principle rather than the detail. It is hardly surprising this generates poll headlines that look better for assisted dying than the reality: in our most recent polling, 80 per cent of voters claim to know what the assisted dying Bill is, but only 38 per cent can correctly describe it. Some tactics are more dishonest: supportive campaign groups still share polling conducted before the removal of the High Court requirement.

It would not have taken a genius to see the public turn against the Bill. Upon returning to my 2021 polling for this piece, I was struck by one finding in particular. Asked about safeguards for assisted dying, only 10 per cent said that if there were not enough safeguards to make assisted dying safe, it should still be legalised. That’s right: only one in 10 – a fringe minority – backed proceeding regardless.

There was once consensus for assisted dying in Britain. As the public now looks at what they deem to be the deficient, much-altered Bill in front of Parliament today, that consensus is no more.

Now we must win the peace, from disabled people’s rights, including to benefits, to palliative care, which hitherto has scarcely been mentioned except in relation to assisted suicide.