Northern Ireland is to follow England and Wales in giving retrospective pardons to gay men convicted of offences that have since been abolished.

Northern Ireland's parliament, Stormont, has backed the provision for pardons set out in the Policing and Crime Bill in Britain last month.

A "consent motion" will now go forward but is expected to be passed, Irish News reported.

Justice minister Claire Sugden, who proposed the provision to grant posthumous pardons to all those convicted of homosexual acts, said: "Pardon arrangements should be brought to Northern Ireland as soon as possible to ensure that there is equal treatment for gay and bisexual men here as for their counterparts in England and Wales."

"This is an opportunity for the criminal justice system to try and right the wrongs of the past and one which will allow for much earlier resolve than that presented by way of an Assembly Bill."  

Anyone still alive with a conviction can also apply for the same provision, known as "Turing's Law" after Alan Turing, the computer scientist, mathematician and wartime British code-breaker who was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts and died two years later from cyanide poisoning. He was granted a posthumous pardon by the Queen in 2013.

Many thousands of men throughout the UK were convicted under the anti-gay "gross indecency" laws.

Homosexual acts were decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967 and in Northern Ireland in 1982.