The 20th annual conference was opened by kidney patient Bernie Grant, MP for Tottenham, who has been on dialysis since October 1998 after a heart by-pass.
"I found myself in a whole new world," he said. "If I had been asked what CAPD meant, I would have said Californian Police Department."
Most of the time he had been on haemodialysis and the experience had been a revelation to him. "I didn't know how many black and minority people suffered kidney failure, I did not know about the lack of resources or the inflexibility of the system. And I never knew water tasted so good before I became a kidney patient."
He found the care excellent, the nurses doing a tremendous job, but shortage of staff and overall resources bedevilled the system. "I ask myself, is the service being run for the benefit of the patients, or for the benefit of the practitioners?"
Dialysing at 9pm three times a week and getting home at 3am meant that the next day was lost. When he complained to a doctor, he was told that 20 years ago people over 40 were not treated. "So, I'm supposed to be grateful."
"I didn't know that patients were so dispirited," he said and described one woman who could not go on CAPD because her one room flat did not have space to store supplies, and a young musician who had lost all his friends and all he had to live for was to meet his fellow patients.
Mr Grant condemmed the attachment of racial conditions to transplant organs and said the only criterion should be the matching of tissues. He pledges that the All Party Kidney Group, of which he is a member, would be a very strong voice arguing for renal patients. "There is a job of work for us all to do," he said. "We need a basic charter of rights for kidney patients."