Voters to register individually from 2014

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British citizens will be asked to register individually to vote from 2014, the government has announced.

It was due to be made compulsory by 2015, but Cabinet Office minister Mark Harper said the government will speed up the timetable to legislate and make new voters provide more ID from 2014.

Harper said it was time to end the present system whereby one person from each household is responsible for submitting the names of all those eligible to vote in their property.

In a statement to the Commons, he said: "Household registration harks back to a time when registration was the responsibility of the head of the household.

"Access to a right as fundamental as voting should not be dependent on someone else.

"We need a better system of keeping up with people who move house or need to update their registration for other reasons. Individual registration provides an opportunity to move forward towards a system centred around the individual citizen."

The minister said the current system was too vulnerable to fraud, which "knocks the confidence" of voters.

From 2014, before being added to the register, voters will have to provide their date of birth, signature and national insurance number.

The details would then be checked with the Department for Work and Pensions to check the person is genuine

Harper said move would speed up the timetable for implementing individual registration, which was not due to replace household registration until 2015 at the earliest.

He told MPs: "We will drop the previous government's plans for a voluntary phase, which would have cost about £74m over the Parliament."

The minister also announced a "data matching" pilot scheme would be launched next year, enabling registration officers to compare the electoral register with other public databases and identify eligible voters who are currently missing.

Individuals will then be given the chance to register.

Harper concluded: "The steps I am announcing today will achieve change over the lifetime of this Parliament that will safeguard the integrity of our electoral system and improve registration levels.

"They are an important part of rebuilding people's faith in our democracy."

Shadow justice secretary Jack Straw argued the announcement was being made for "purely party political reasons" and represented a threat to "integrity of our democracy".

He warned that since the introduction of individual registration in Northern Ireland in 2002 there has been a drop in registrations.

Straw also critcised plans to use the 2010 register, despite having an estimated 3.5 million people missing from it, as a basis for redrawing constituency boundaries.

He told MPs: "Will you accept that what you have announced today, the speeding up of individual registration but without safeguards or any additional funding potentially, could undermine the integrity of our democracy?

"It could lead to a repeat on the mainland of the Northern Ireland experience where the introduction of individual registration led to a 10 per cent drop in registrations and many eligible voters effectively being disenfranchised."

Eleanor Laing (Con, Epping Forest) said: "Of course, I have said in the past that I don't want to see anything occur that will undermine the integrity of the democratic system, but nothing the minister has said today appears to undermine the integrity of the democratic system."

Fiona MacTaggart (Lab, Slough) and Philip Hollobone (Con, Kettering) both criticised the minister for saying that people would not be "forced" to register.

MacTaggart pointed to the arrest of some Tory members in previous elections concerning electoral fraud.

Hollobone felt democracy could not function at its best if 10 per cent of voters were not registered and that it should be a legal requirement for individuals to vote.

He said: "Can I encourage you when you bring the legislation through to make it a legal requirement for people to register?"

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