Transgender people will be protected under Government plans to ban conversion therapy, according to the equalities minister.

Women and equalities minister Liz Truss said she wanted to ensure that transgender people were “free to live their lives” without being subject to “horrific” conversion therapy.

The minister said earlier this month that the Government would “shortly” bring forward plans to ban conversion therapy, after a string of resignations from the Government’s LGBT advisory panel.

Ms Truss told ITV’s Peston: “I’m very clear that we want to make sure that transgender people are free to live their lives and don’t face the type of horrific conversion therapy that currently has been going on here in the UK.”

Charity Stonewall welcomed the comments, calling them a “clear commitment” by the minister in a post on Twitter.

The charity added: “It is vital that the forthcoming legislative ban promised by Government protects trans people from conversion therapy in all its forms, including medical, psychiatric, psychological, religious and cultural practices.”

Boris Johnson has said ending conversion therapy is “technically complex” but insisted that ministers will “stamp it out” after three LGBT advisers resigned in protest.

The Prime Minister said he would work to end the “abhorrent” practice after his Government came under damning criticism for allegedly creating a “hostile environment” for LGBT people.

Jayne Ozanne, the first of the advisers to quit, cited delays to banning the pseudoscientific process as among her many complaints of ministers.

She was followed by James Morton, who had reportedly been “very concerned for several months” that Ms Truss and her junior ministers were “not committed to LGBT equality”.

Ellen Murray became the third person to quit the panel – writing on Twitter that she decided to leave “due to the Government’s persistent and worsening hostility towards our community in myriad areas”.