The government intends to accelerate the introduction of compulsory individual voter registration in Britain.

Currently the head of a household is asked to list eligible voters and does not have to provide ID for them.

It was originally planned that voters would have to register themselves and provide identification  from 2015 at the earliest.

Now ministers aim to bring forward the plans to 2014 for new voters in an attempt to combat fraud and increase faith in the electoral system, but to prevent a big drop in the number of voters, those who are already on the electoral register will have until after the 2015 election to comply with the new rules.

Announcing the plans to MPs, Cabinet Office Minister Mark Harper said the new system would require each person to register themselves and to provide extra details, such as a signature, date of birth and National Insurance number.

The details would then be checked with the Department for Work and Pensions.

Mr Harper said that the current system is open to fraud which reduces people’s confidence in the voting system, and Electoral Commission chief executive Peter Wardle has said that individual voter registration is the only way to ensure the system is robust.

Mr Harper said a planned voluntary phase would have cost £74m.

Instead, he said, while individual registration would be compulsory by 2014, no-one would be removed from the register for failing to register individually and provide ID until after the 2015 general election.

pointed to the danger of reducing the number of registered voters.

Mr Harper said that statistics from the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission showed fraudulent registration was “one of the principal causes of electoral fraud”.

MPs were told that, in an effort to get more people onto the electoral register, voters’ details would be cross checked with other public databases in a “data matching” pilot scheme.

Mr Harper said the UK voter registration rate was 91-92%, which “compares well internationally” but acknowledged there was a “significant number” of people eligible to vote, who were not registered to do so.

Labour MP Tom Harris and Conservative Philip Hollobone suggested it should be made a legal requirement that people register to vote, but Mr Harper said that in a free society, it was up to the individual.

A draft Bill on individual voter registration will be introduced in 2010/11 for pre-legislative scrutiny, followed by a Bill to introduce individual registration from 2014.