Britain has the chance to wipe out HIV transmissions, says Brighton MP

A Brighton MP said that he thought that it was some “horrible joke” when doctors told that him he had HIV.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, became only the second MP to announce that he had HIV in 2018, in an emotional speech in the House of Commons.

In an interview with GB News, due to air today (Tuesday 25 January), he recalled wishing the diagnosis was “a kind of nightmare that you wake up from, but it’s not”.

Mr Russell-Moyle, 35, said that he came out as gay as a teenager but had known about his sexuality in primary school.

He said that he had HIV diagnosed in his second year at university when “in most people’s minds, it was still a death sentence, so it was still something very tragic”.

But he said that he eventually decided to speak about it publicly as “keeping things hidden in politics tends to be the road to ruin”.

Referring to the only other MP to have spoken publicly about having HIV, Chris Smith, Mr Russell-Moyle said: “He announced it when he knew he was retiring but also partly announced it because the papers had got hold of the story and I felt like I wanted to be on the front foot.

“I wanted that burden off me. I didn’t want to be having to look over my shoulder.”

But he said that the country was also at “a crux point where we could abolish HIV transmissions”.

He said that, of 20 people newly infected with HIV in the past year in Brighton, only three were new transmissions.

The remaining cases were all historic cases where people had lived with it without knowing – and the three new cases were passed on from historic cases.

Mr Russell-Moyle said: “So, if we treat those people – once you’re on treatment you can’t pass it on – and so, it means that you stop being able to get new infections.

“Brighton has got a high number of HIV diagnoses compared to some other towns and cities the same size, because of historic reasons and the community … we could really do that. We could really achieve that.”

The MP said that, while it was a “miracle of science compared to where we’ve got in 30 years”, he also warned against “a danger that we’ve dropped at the last hurdle” and the last groups of people were not reached.

And although times had changed since his diagnosis, he said, remembering how “you kind of think this is some horrible joke, you wish it was a horrible joke”, he said that there was a fine balancing act to be achieved when discussing the condition.

He said: “We don’t want to go around saying, ‘oh, don’t worry about it any more. You don’t need to use any protection. We can just treat it with a pill.’

“But equally, we want to dispel the kind of fear around it, so that we say to people, ‘if you do have it, it’s not a problem.’”

He added: “Thankfully, we have come now to the debate, which is about what costs the least amount of money, and what saves the most amount of lives.

“Well, it’s about providing the medicine when you can and, in a wealthy country like ours, we can.”

The full interview with Gloria De Piero is due to air on GB News at 12.30pm today (Tuesday 25 January).