Parliamentary bills to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill people are being debated concurrently in the Scottish and Westminster parliaments. On 13th May 2025, Scottish politicians voted 70 to 56 to progress the legislation to the next parliamentary stage, showing a majority support for the proposed legislation.

On 14th May 2025, the day after the historic vote in the Scottish parliament, the End of Life Studies Group organized a panel event to discuss some of the key evidence from countries where it is already lawful.

This was not a ‘for’ or ‘against’ panel discussion. This is a panel which attempted to get behind some of the headlines and assume a longer-term, contextualized, evidence-based perspective.

Panel members included Dr Naomi Richards, Director of the End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow who has researched assisted dying on and off for 20 years. Dr Richards is an anthropologist and teaches the dedicated course Assisted Dying: Rhetorics and Reality as part of the End of Life Studies online distance learning programme.

Professor Anne Kerr, Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow and a medical sociologist, chaired the Advisory Board of the recent Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ research into public views on assisted dying in England. She discussed the Citizens’ Jury method and the views expressed by those who took part.

Sarah Reed, a Senior Research and Policy Fellow at the Nuffield Trust, spoke about the Nuffield Trust’s ongoing review of the international evidence base on assisted dying implementation.

The Discussion

Kicking off the panel discussion, Anne Kerr outlined findings from the Nuffield Council’ssurvey and citizens’ jury. The first survey had 2031 respondents and the second 2011 respondents. The Citizens Jury comprised 30 people broadly representative of the national population of England. The Jury spent 24 hours together, over 8 weeks, hearing a range of evidence and deliberating on the topic.

Both the surveys and the Citizens’ Jury show the majority of people support legalisation of assisted dying in England. Both the surveys and the Citizens’ Jury show that the most acceptable circumstance for assisted dying is if the service is limited to adults who have a terminal diagnosis.

If you would like to read the full report written by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, you can find it here.

Sarah Reed then introduced the audience to the Nuffield Trust’s research into the international picture. She highlighted how in almost all systems, assisted dying is publicly funded and integrated into the health system. She also highlighted that systems vary between more restrictive systems where people are required to have a terminal illness (as proposed in Scotland and England and Wales) and less restrictive systems where non-terminal conditions are included e.g. Netherlands, Belgium, Canada.

Regardless of the eligibility criteria, the proportion of total deaths which were assisted deaths has increased over time in most countries, although assisted deaths make up a relatively small percentage of total deaths in any given year (and smaller still in places which restrict access to people with terminal illness).

Picking up on this theme of the numbers who access assisted dying around the world, Dr Richards also highlighted that when assisted dying legislation is restricted to those who are terminally ill and to the method is self-administration (as opposed to doctor-administration) the numbers who access assisted dying are very low - less than 1% across 10 jurisdictions with equivalent bills.

While many more people may discuss it as an option amongst family and friends in the period leading up to their death, and while it may contribute to an increase in death literacy over time, it would be a mistake to view it as the panacea for all the problems of dying in theUK in the 21st Century and its legalization may give people the false impression that they no longer need to worry about what will happen to them at the end of their life.

You may want to read Dr Richards’ op-ed in the Scotsman - Tiny Number of People Who Choose Assisted Dying Shows its No Panacea - published on 27th May.

Also check out her posts on the End of Life Studies blog.

Thanks to all of the speakers who took part in this panel discussion, and to the Chair, Graeme Roy, Dean of External Engagement for the College of Social Science.

First published: 10 June 2025

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