Toby Porter reflects on challenges and opportunities in hospice care at conference

Toby Porter has opened the Hospice UK 2024 conference in Glasgow by reflecting on the significant challenges and headwinds currently facing the sector, but also the huge support and goodwill it continues to enjoy.

Speaking alongside Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, who formally opened this year’s conference, Porter started by reflecting on many decades of fulsome support by The Royal Family for the UK’s charitable hospice sector.

“I would like to start by thanking you, ma’am,” he said, “for the constant and wonderful encouragement and support you have given to the hospice movement over your entire adult life, here in Scotland and across the UK.”

Porter continued to discuss the two significant challenges the sector faces as around 900 delegates gathered at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow.

Talking about the complex issue of assisted dying and its potential ramifications for the hospice sector, Porter emphasised Hospice UK’s continued position of neutrality. “We have aimed to build understanding among the politicians proposing a change in the law about all aspects of hospice care.

“And the real measure of the skill of this generation of MPs will therefore not be the way they vote on Friday, but the extent to which the inevitable disappointments and fears of those on the ‘losing’ side are either shown to have been misplaced or can be substantially allayed in the months and years to come.”

Porter emphasised that the hospice movement has been a significant point of unity and shared conviction in the debate, and regardless of how the Bills on assisted dying across the UK progress, that hospices and their staff and volunteers will have a vital, unifying role to play.

Turning to the second great challenge facing the sector, Porter shared his frustration that while the profile and vocal political support for hospices has arguably never been higher or more apparent, that the actual financial pressures facing hospices have worsened rather than improved in recent months.

Calling for greater government investment into palliative care, he said: “Nobody’s choice whether or not to request an assisted death should ever be influenced by a real or imagined fear of not being able to receive the pain relief and other palliative care that they need."

Referring to costs linked to increases in Employer National Insurance, he added: “But it is quite unacceptable that a sector that lives and breathes by its commitment to patients and its conviction of its systemic value to the NHS be asked to contribute some £30m more of its own charitable funds to an NHS which is underfunding it.”

Hospice UK continues to call for both short and long term investment into hospice and palliative care, based on reform of how services are commissioned by the NHS.

Throughout his speech, Porter also expressed the strong public, media and political support for the sector. Regardless of the challenges faced, he shared his conviction that the hospice sector can emerge stronger and continue to play a vital role in the UK for years to come.

Hospice UK’s National Conference takes place from 26 – 28 November, and will return to Liverpool in 2025.

Over the course of the three days in Glasgow, colleagues will share and discuss challenges and opportunities facing the hospice sector in the UK.

Explore some of the highlights of this year's National Conference, below.