Public opinion has moved sharply in favour of assisted suicide, according to a poll for The Sunday Times. The YouGov survey of more than 2,000 people shows that most would consider euthanasia for themselves and think that relatives who help with assisted suicides at foreign clinics should not be prosecuted.

The poll followed the broadcast last week by Sky TV of the assisted suicide of Craig Ewert, who was suffering from motor neurone disease. By two to one (61% to 27%) people said it was right to screen it.

People overwhelmingly (85%) agreed with the decision by prosecutors not to charge the parents of Daniel James, the young rugby player who was paralysed after an injury.

It also revealed strong support for a change in the law on assisted suicide to give immunity from prosecution to those who help a relative or friend with an incurable condition to die. More than two-thirds (69%) think the law should be changed.

Most strikingly, by four to one (61% to 15%) people said they would consider assisted suicide for themselves if suffering from a terminal disease.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns for assisted dying to be made legal, said the poll demonstrated that the law was out of step with public opinion. “I don’t think there is any doubt about the appetite for change from the British public,” she said.

“The issue is about parliamentarians and whether they are really representing constituents.” Lord Warner, a former health minister, is leading an attempt to change the law to guarantee freedom from prosecution to those who help terminally ill friends or relatives commit suicide at foreign clinics.

Under British law, anybody who helps another to commit suicide can be prosecuted, and face up to 14 years’ imprisonment. Although about 100 British people have had assisted deaths at Swiss clinics, no one who has accompanied a person there, or helped to arrange a suicide, has been prosecuted.

Peers plan to introduce an amendment to government revisions to the 1961 Suicide Act, which will be contained in a new Justice and Coroners Bill announced in the Queen’s speech. Warner said: “We could put an amendment down to this bill to make it very clear that if someone assisted a relative or friend who was terminally ill and went abroad to, let us say, Dignitas in Switzerland, then they could not be prosecuted under legislation in the UK.”

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