ED Miliband reacted to David Cameron’s immigration speech by labelling the Prime Minister a “busted flush” who makes “false promises”.

The Labour Leader, who was visiting the Nissan factory in Sunderland, said the country needed a better plan to stem the number of people crossing the border.

His comments came after the Prime Minister set out measures to ban immigrants from receiving state benefits, including social housing and child benefits, for a minimum of four years.

Mr Miliband, speaking to The Northern Echo, said: “David Cameron has made promises before, he has broken those promises and and now he is coming along saying a whole lot of new things.

“The reality is you need a concrete plan. Labour has a concrete plan to restrict benefits, to say we are going to stop the undercutting of wages and to make people learn English when they come here.

“Our plan is far better than David Cameron’s.”

In particular, Mr Miliband said he did not want voters to turn to Ukip out of frustration with the country’s current policies and insisted that Nigel Farage’s solutions were not the right ones.

“People think that the country is not working for them and I think those people are wondering if any political party can turn it round.

“I sit opposite David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions every week where he boasts about how everything is fine, everything is fixed. I do not think that is what most people think.

“Our job in the next five months is to outline what the solutions are.”

He also insisted that leaving the European Union would be catastrophic for families and jobs in the North-East.

“Nissan is the right place to be talking about this because getting out of Europe would be a disaster for jobs here, it would be a disaster for jobs across the country.

“Labour has said very clearly we would support a referendum if there were a transfer of powers, but a Conservative party that is stampeding towards the exit door is bad. Our future lies with the EU.

“Ukip are also committed to leaving the EU and they claim to be on the side of the working people. It would be a disaster for working people if we followed their approach.”