Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has praised a decision by NHS England to stop facilitating access to gay “cure” therapy.

Despite the NHS not offering gay conversion therapy directly, until now patients seeking to change their sexuality have been connected to organisations which do provide it by NHS staff.

However, an agreement has been signed by fourteen organisations including NHS England, which affirms that the controversial practice should not be offered to patients.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg praised the move, tweeting at PinkNews: “Quite right too.

.@pinknews quite right too. Thinking you can cure homosexuality is abhorrent and potentially harmful. Pleased to see this commitment. — Nick Clegg (@nick_clegg) January 19, 2015

“Thinking you can cure homosexuality is abhorrent and potentially harmful. Pleased to see this commitment.”

The Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK’ ensures that patients won’t be referred to the practices, deemed as damaging by a number of national and global health bodies.

It also ensures that training will be provided to NHS staff, in order to help them support LGBT people who seek such therapy.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder back in 1990, and gay “cure” therapies have been widely condemned by health bodies across the world.

The Executive Director of the Telegraph Media Group, Lord Black, today reaffirmed his calls to ban the widely condemned practice outright.

UKIP MEP Roger Helmer last year claimed the NHS should fund ‘gay cure’ therapy.