The full tables for the YouGov/Sunday Times poll are here, no tables yet for ICM, but the News of the World report is here.
As with Populus’s poll in the week, the individual measures announced in the budget were broadly positive received. 68% told YouGov they supported the increase in tax on “large environmentally unfriendly family cars”, 63% supported requiring supermarkets to charge for plastic bags, 77% supporting equiring people on incapacity benefit to attend work focused interviews. A slighlt plurality of people opposed the increase in alcohol duties - 48% to 46% - but this was hardly overwhelmingly opposition.
Despite that, opinion towards the government’s general handling of the economy looked very low - 86% though inflation was higher than the government said, 78% said the government wastes large amounts of money, 66% agreed the government spent too much in good economic times. All the measures of economic optimism were low. 47% agreed Alistair Darling was not up to the job, with only 22% disagreeing and the poll found Cameron & Osbourne had a significant lead over Brown & Darling as the team people trust more to help their standard of living - 33% to 21%. ICM’s poll also found a significant Tory lead on the economy - they were most trusted by 34% compared to 28% for the Tories. A second ICM survey in the Sunday Telegraph found 31% thouht the budget would make things worse, only 7% thought it would improve matters.
It’s an apparent contradiction - the individual measures in the budget are popular, but it looks as though it has really hit their popularity. Off the top of my head I can think of two explanations - it’s possible that people support what Alistair Darling has done given the circumstances he faces, but that the fact the government have found themselves in such circumstances has undermined their previous confidence in Brown’s handling of the economy. Alternatively it could just be that general bad economic tidings, brought home to them by the budget, have made them less positively disposed to the government regardless of whether they actually attribute any blame to them.
On other political trackers Brown’s approval ratings with YouGov slip ever lower - his net score is down to minus 26 from minus 21 last month. David Cameron’s remains unchanged on plus 14. Nick Clegg’s rating was minus 6, but that’s still with 35% don’t knows. In the ICM poll Cameron had a lead of 6 points over Brown on best Prime Minister.
As usual the Sunday Times asked a grab bag of questions of lots of other issues. On Lord Goldsmith’s proposals for Britishness 51% of people supported the idea of citizenship ceremonies, for school leavers… but only if they excluded the suggested oath of allegiance to the monarch, supported by only 15%.
Only 29% of respondents supported Heathrow expansion. 39% thought expansion should be elsewhere, either in East London or in regional airports. 18% were opposed to airport expansion entirely.
Finally YouGov asked about abortion law. 35% supported the status quo, 48% supported a reduction in the legal time limit to 20 weeks and 8% supported a total ban on abortion.
Last night I reported YouGov’s findings on abortion and the use of embryos for research - today I’ll cover the rest of the poll, which examined stem-cell research, cloning, euthanasia and “designer babies”.
As you might have noticed, the stem cell question on the Telegraph’s table doesn’t make sense - the use of stem cell research in what “way” exactly? The actual YouGov question refered to scientists using cloned embryos as a source of stem cells to treat diseases such as Alzheimers, diabetes and heart disease, and asked respondents when, if ever, this was acceptable. A large majority (80%) of respondents did support scientists using stem cells from cloned embryos in some circumstances, but the majority of people qualified their support to some extent. 20% supported the use of stem cells from clones for only life threatening illnesses, a further 25% supported it for all serious illness, while another 27% supported it for all medical purposes, but not cosmetic ones. Only 7% would support the use of embryonic stem cells for cosmetic purposes.
Asked about cloning for reproductive purposes the survey suggested found a high level of opposition. 60% of people thought that reproductive cloning should be illegal for at least the foreseeable future, half of them thought it should be illegal forever. 20% thought it should be legal only for couples with infertility problems, with only 10% of respondents thinking it should be legal in general. The question specifically asked about people’s attitudes to cloning, “assuming the cloning of babies was proved safe for both the baby and the woman carrying it,” so in theory this should represent opposition above and beyond what fears respondents may have about the safety of cloning.
YouGov went on to ask about whether people felt well enough informed to make decisions about things like stem cell research and cloning: 60% of respondents said they did not. So, while respondents were mainly opposed to reproductive cloning and broadly supportive, although with caveats, towards the use of stem cells from cloned embryos, most also thought that they didn’t have enough knowledge of the subject to make informed decisions.
Moving on, the YouGov survey showed strong support for euthanasia. Asked if they thought “that people who are terminally ill should have the right to decide when they want to die and to ask for medical assistance to help them die if they are unable to end their own lives” 87% said yes, with only 6% opposed. Asked if people should be able to assist the suicides of close relatives without fear of prosecution, 67% said yes.
YouGov then asked about a number of potential negative effects were euthanasia to be legalised. Despite the previous apparant support for euthanasia, 51% of respondents thought that elderly people would feel pressured to seek euthanasia, 47% of respondents thougth it would lead to a significant number of murders disguised as euthanasia and 21% thought it would lead to worse levels of care for the terminally ill. Only 14% thought there would be no negative effects. Personally I’d have liked to see a follow up question to see if people thought the desirability of allowing people the right to seek euthanasia outweighed these negative effects or not, but there goes.
On a related subject YouGov also asked respondents if there was a “significant moral difference” between doctors ended the life of a patient in a permanent coma by withdrawing nutrition or by giving them a fatal dose of morphine (the wording of the question was carefully but so that both instances were presented as “hastening the patient’s death”). 37% of patients thought there was a moral difference, 54% thought there was no significant difference.
Finally YouGov asked about “designer babies” - i.e. modifying or screening the genetic make-up of babies before they are born in order to select specific characteristics. Respondents attitudes followed a strong pattern in these questions - about 20% of people were steadfastly opposed to any sort of designer babies, while most other respondents were in favour of genetic screening or modifications in order to prevent serious genetic disorders. Only a tiny proportion (2%) of respondents thought that genetic screening should be allowed for purposes like making children more intelligent or increasing their sporting prowess.
So far in the UK permission has been granted for at least one “designer baby” in order to provide a bone marrow match for a seriously ill sibling (although the parents have not yet managed to have another baby), and it has been suggested that selection by gender should be allowed in IVF treatment. YouGov asked about both these situations. While a majority (58%) of people supported “designer babies” to provide donors to save the life of siblings, there was very strong opposition to screening embryos by gender; 77% were opposed, with only 14% in favour.
So, as the Telegraph’s editorial yesterday said, people’s opinions on medical ethics are a bit, well, woolly. People support euthanasia, despite agreeing it might have horrible consequences. They support abortion, but would like to see it tightened up in some way. They dislike cloning, apart from for stem cells to treat illnesses, and don’t mind experimentation on embryos for medical purposes, as long as they are only “spare embryos” left over from IVF treatment.
Today’s Telegraph carried an extensive YouGov poll on abortion, embryo research and related topics. There were a couple of polls on abortion earlier this year when Michael Howard indicated he wouild favour a tighter time limit on abortion. They showed that somewhere between a quarter and a third of people supported the current 24 week limit, with most other people favouring a shorter time limit. There was very little support for the complete prohibition of abortion. Today’s YouGov poll shows similar figures.
YouGov found that only a quarter of people support the current 24 week limit, with 58% of people favouring a tighter limit. A 20 week limit was the most popular choice, supported by 30% of respondents. Only small minorities supported allowing abortions up until birth (2%) or totally outlawing abortion (6%). The wording of the question specifically pointed out that premature babies born as early as the 23rd week have been able to survive; this does not, however, seem to have made much difference to the answer - a YouGov poll back in March asked about abortion time limits without mentioning this and found an almost identical 26% of people supported the 24 week limit.
Asked if, time limits aside, abortions were too easy to obtain in this country, the majority (51%) of people thought that the balance was about right, although there is a significant body of opinion (30%) that think that abortions are too easy to obtain. Asked if women are using abortion as a form of contraception, around a quarter of respondents thought that this was common behaviour, 67% thought such behaviour was either confined to just a few, or almost no women.
Finally on the subject of abortion, YouGov asked if it should be free “on demand” on the NHS. There are actually two different concepts here: whether it should be publicly funded, and whether it should be available “on demand” - legally abortions in the UK are not available on demand, two doctors (one in an emergency) must decide that continuing the pregnancy would be detrimental to the mother, the child or the mother’s other children’s physical or mental health. For whatever reason, this question showed the sharpest divide - 41% thought that abortions should be available on demand on the NHS, 48% thought they shouldn’t. While on other abortion questions there were no large differences between age groups, on this question there was; amongst under 30s 53% thought that abortion should be free on demand, while amongst over 50s, 61% thought it should not.
YouGov then moved on to the subject of embryo research. Slighty over two-thirds of respondents were happy with “spare” early embryos from IVF treatment being used for medical research, with only 20% opposed. Opposition rose drastically though when it came to the question of creating embryos specifically for experimentation - 46% were opposed, with 41% in support.
YouGov then asked a serious of questions governing the rights of embryos, how the law should govern the use of embryos and what sort of research justified their use. Responses fell into three broad groups: about a sixth of respondents were broadly opposed to using embryos in research - they thought that the rights of the embryo outweighed the rights of parents, and embryos should have the same rights as human babies. A slightly smaller proportion (11%) of people thought that it was completely unacceptable to use embryos in medical research.
A second broad group of respondents, numbering somewhere around a fifth of respondents, took the view that early embryos were really not human beings and therefore there should be no legal protection, and that it should be up to parents how the embryos are used. The rest, making the up the majority of respondents, didn’t really think that early embryos were really human beings and thought their rights should come second to patients, but thought their use should be limited by law nevertheless. A majority (54%) of respondents thought they should be used only for research into life threatening illnesses.
The poll also included questions on euthanasia, cloning and “designer babies”, which I will cover tomorrow.