Justice ministers have told MPs they want urgently to ban perpetrators of domestic abuse from directly cross-examining their victims within the family court system.

The move follows an urgent Commons question from Labour MP Peter Kyle, who raised the issue citing recent “excellent Guardian coverage” that exposed how women were being directly confronted and questioned by violent and abusive men within the secretive family court system.

Justice minister Sir Oliver Heald told MPs returning from the Christmas recess that ministers wanted a ban on cross-examination by perpetrators and are prepared to introduce the necessary primary legislation to make the change.

He told the Commons that the timescale for introducing the change would depend on how long it took the Ministry of Justice to complete the “fast-track” work which was now being conducted.

“The lord chancellor has requested urgent advice. It is illegal in the criminal courts and I am determined to see it banned in the civil family courts too,” Heald told MPs.

The minister indicated that officials were working to see how the legal ban in the criminal courts needed to be transposed to prove effective in the family court.

“In order to ban cross-examination it would be necessary for primary legislation,” he said. “Primary legislation is also required to cover ancillary matters relating to this. Work is being done at great pace to ensure that all these matters are dealt with in a comprehensive and effective way. The urgency is there.”

He also cautioned against holding a consultation with victims’ and survivors’ groups before introducing the proposed ban, saying: “It is pretty straight forward what is required. It is a ban and ancillary measures to ensure that it is possible for cross-examination to take place without the perpetrator being allowed to do it.”

The Guardian last month highlighted evidence based on interviews with participants, lawyers and court officials that revealed how family court procedures allowed men with criminal convictions for abusing their former partners to directly question them – sometimes repeatedly.

It also uncovered evidence that restraining orders to protect the women were being ignored and that fathers, no matter how violent or abusive, were being allowed to repeatedly pursue contact with children and their mothers.

The president of the family court division, Sir James Munby, has been outspoken in his support for a ban on direct cross-examination.

Kyle said it had wreaked untold devastation on victims and survivors of domestic violence.

He said he had spoken to women who had been cross-examined by their abusers, often convicted rapists. He cited one case in which a convicted murderer had sued for custody of his child from prison and cross-examined the sister of the woman he had murdered and questioned her right to be a parent to his child.

“I have now spoken to numerous survivors of abuse whose accounts of torment under cross-examination, often by convicted rapists, in the family court are devastating to hear but impossible for most of us to even imagine,” the MP for Hove said.

“Abuse is being continued, perpetuated, right under the noses of judges and police – the very institutions that should be protecting the vulnerable with every sinew of state power.”

Labour MPs repeatedly pressed Heald for a timetable for the introduction of the amending legislation to implement the ban but he could only promise to do so “shortly”. Conservative MP Robert Neill, who chairs the justice select committee, suggested the simplest solution would be to adopt the criminal provisions “lock, stock and barrel” and accept that the “modest” cost of a court-appointed advocate to undertake the cross-examination was necessary.