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Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle has announced he is HIV positive during a speech in the House of Commons.

The MP for Brighton Kemptown is the only current sitting MP to disclose he is living with the virus.

He is the second MP to ever announce he has HIV and said he decided to speak out "because he has a duty as a Member of Parliament."

Mr Russell-Moyle told MPs that because he has been taking the right medication for several years, it means he is what the NHS calls "HIV-positive undetectable" which means you cannot detect it in his system and that he cannot transmit it to someone else.

He hit out at the Government for slashing sexual health budgets and said "we are genuinely at a real crossroads about where we can go with HIV now."

Speaking in the Commons on Thursday, he said: "Next year I'll be marking an anniversary of my own: 10 years since I became HIV positive.

"It's been a long journey - from the fear to acceptance and from today advocacy, knowing my treatment keeps me healthy and that it protects any partner I have."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was present in the chamber as Mr Russell-Moyle made his speech.

The 32-year-old, from Brighton, said in an interview with the Press Association that cuts to public health meant he could not "keep quiet anymore" about an issue which affects him "so personally".

He said he felt "relieved" to announce that he is living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which damages the cells in the immune system and weakens a person's ability to fight infections and disease. There is currently no cure but effective treatments allow most HIV positive people to live a long and healthy life.

Only one other MP has ever publicly spoken about being infected with the virus. Former Labour cabinet minister Chris Smith revealed his status in 2005 through a newspaper interview, a few months before he was made a peer.

The shadow cabinet "had been very supportive", Mr Russell-Moyle added.

The MP, who was elected to his seat in 2017, said he chose the timing of the revelation to mark the 30th World Aids Day on December 1.

It is also a decade since he was infected with the virus.

Mr Russell-Moyle, who made the announcement during a debate he initiated in the the House of Commons about HIV and World Aids Day, said he discovered he was living with the virus after routine tests.

Finding out he had HIV was a "real shock" but it was "not the end of the world, even though it might feel like that for a few seconds", he added.

He said in some ways he felt "lucky" because other people with the virus can face more stigma than a "white gay man in a very liberal open city" - such as people living in rural areas, black people, women or older people.

Mr Russell-Moyle said: "I felt like I had a duty as a Member of Parliament - a few months ago I was giving out awards, congratulating people who have spoken out about their HIV status, saying how brave they were, and there was a feeling in the back of my mind saying 'Well, if I'm congratulating people, I also need to be so brave to do that'.

"My job as an MP is to speak out about personal experiences and linking those with political experience. And if I can't do it, how can I be asking others to do that?

"Secondly, I think that we are genuinely at a real crossroads about where we can go with HIV now.

"We start to see really the tools in our hands to eliminate HIV, really start to reduce HIV infections.

"But at the same time, the Government is starting to slash sexual health budgets.

"It has, of course, already done this crazy thing of putting (the responsibility for) sexual health into local councils and out of the NHS.

"We have got the tools but we seem to be going in the wrong direction.

"So, for me, there was also this political element that I can't keep quiet about that any more, particularly when it not only affects people I know but it affects me so personally."

With Labour colleagues surrounding him, Mr Russell-Moyle added: "I finally wanted to be able to stand in this place and tell all those out there living with HIV, that their status does not define them. We can be whoever we want to be and to those who haven't been tested, maybe because out of fear, I say it is better to live in knowledge than die in fear."

He added: "I am an HIV-positive man, but because I've been taking the right medication for several years, I am what the NHS calls HIV-positive 'undetectable'.

"That means not only that you cannot detect HIV in my system, so I don't get sick, it also means I can't transmit HIV to someone else.

"So as the virus lays undetectable and dormant in my body, my medication ensures that the virus doesn't reactivate, doesn't progress and can't be passed on. That's why the NHS says: Undetectable equals untransmittable."

Chief executive of the sexual health charity the Terrance Higgins Trust Ian Green said Mr Russell-Moyle has "done everybody a service" and has done a lot to "normalise HIV in the public's mind."

He added: "I think he's done everybody a service about talking about his own personal journey with HIV.

"I have had a couple of conversations with him and he's aware that because he's a Member of Parliament there is going to be a spotlight on him talking about his HIV diagnosis.

"I think it will go a long way to say that he's very successful, he's a Member of Parliament, he has no issue in terms of representing his constituency as somebody living with HIV. So that does a lot to normalise HIV in the public's mind.

"I think he has taken a very important decision for him, and from talking to him I know the reason he wants to do this is because he wants to tackle the stigma associated with HIV head on."