CORONATION Street and other soap operas are helping to change attitudes towards gay and lesbian people for the better, Bury North’s MP has said in Parliament.

David Nuttall spoke during a particularly emotive debate on whether homosexuals convicted of outdated laws should be pardoned.

During the debate, openly gay Rhondda MP Chris Bryant came close to tears.

Gay sex was illegal until 1967, when a new law made it legal for those aged 21 or above.

That was lowered to 18 in 1994 and to 16 in 2001. These and other discriminatory laws led to the prosecution of many homosexuals and MPs from all major parties have called on ministers to grant them pardons.

During a Parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on Friday, Mr Nuttall said: “Does (Mr Bryant) agree that much of the progress in the change in attitudes towards gay and lesbian people in society has come from the media and how gay and lesbian people are portrayed in soap operas?

“I offer the gay vicar character (Billy Mayhew, played by Daniel Brocklebank in Coronation Street) as an example. This has all helped to change the way in which gay and lesbian people are portrayed.”

Mr Bryant replied: “I think that media portrayals have been a double-edged sword, to be honest.

“I am slightly sick of the fact that quite often the gay character in a crime drama will be the murderer. It did matter when Michael Cashman’s character kissed another man in Eastenders. That was a change-making moment.”

He added: “One of my first experiences on coming to London was meeting a couple called Christopher and Illtyd, who had lived together in a one-bedroom flat since the 1950s. Just after I first met them, one of them was attacked on the way home. The guy had insisted on coming into the house and had burgled them at knifepoint.

“What was striking about their story was that they could go neither to the hospital nor to the police because they were two men living in a one-bedroom flat and that was a criminal offence under the law of the land.”