“Doctors who practice ‘gay cure therapies’ should be treated like criminals who carry out female genital mutilation,” according to Mike Freer

UK Tory MP, Mike Freer said: “It is time to simply say [gay cure therapy] has no medical merit and can be harmful. It is time to say it is illegal in the UK.”

“It is not something that I or any other gay man or woman can be cured of. To suggest otherwise is not just demeaning. It is morally and medically wrong, ” he said.

The most extreme forms of  ‘gay cure therapies’ include electric shock therapy or training people to feel nauseous if they have homosexual thoughts. Freer claimed one Austrian doctor even offered experimental testicular transplants.

These treatments are not available on the NHS, but it is possible for people to access the range of therapies privately.

In the UK the psychotherapy sector is currently governed by a voluntary memorandum of understanding issued by the Government. David Cameron said in April that the Government could “go further” if this approach did not work.

A Recent YouGov polling showed one in ten health and social care staff had witnessed colleagues express a belief that people can be cured of homosexuality.

In 2009 the BMC Psychiatry Journal surveyed 1300 medical professionals and found 15 per cent had offered some form of therapy.