Policy briefing on Citizens' Jury: exploring public views on assisted dying
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCOB) has published the briefing prepared by Hopkins Van Mil to help inform current UK Parliamentary debate on The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 2024-25, which receives its second reading on 29 November 2024. This is produced as a result of the deliberations by the Citizens’ Jury exploring public views on assisted dying which ran from April to June 2024.
This briefing is the second output from the Citizens’ Jury, the first being our interim report published in September 2024. The briefing shares our initial qualitative analysis of why the Jury, over the course of eight weeks of deliberation, came to the recommendations that they did.
The briefing demonstrates Jury members’ views, feelings and opinions on key topics including:
In-principle reasons for and against a change in the law.
If the law is changed to permit assisted dying - what the eligibility criteria should be and how the service should be administered.
Jury considerations on the end of life.
Safeguarding is of the utmost importance to Jury members, whether or not they agreed with a change in the law. Coercion and pressure on elderly people, disabled people, or others in vulnerable situations is a key concern.
Whether the law change of not, Jury members are keen for public conversations about death and dying, including assisted dying, to continue across society. They also place a very high priority on:
Making sure that palliative and end of life care is better funded and more evenly distributed across the country.
There are significant improvements to health and social care for those with a terminal diagnosis.
The Citizens’ Jury was documented by our partners Postcode Films. Their powerful film shares Jury members’ thoughts on what it was like to take part in a depth exploration on whether the law on assisted dying in England should change. It shares Jury members’ views on how important it is for people across society to have meaningful conversations over time about complex and sensitive topics such as the law on assisted dying.
NCOB is also today publishing the results of two nationally represented surveys. A nationally representative quantitative survey of the English population was done to explore and capture current attitudes towards assisted dying. The results informed our Jury recruitment.
The second survey of the English population enabled us to gather wider views on the recommendations and findings made by the Citizens’ Jury. The surveys were conducted by our partners M·E·L Research.