The Labour leader promised to get the Budget back into surplus "as soon as possible" with a programme that would be independently vetted by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The manifesto, launched by Mr Miliband on the set of Coronation Street and titled Britain Can Be Better, promised to "secure the family finances of the working people of Britain".

Mr Miliband said: "The plan we lay before you is no less ambitious because we live in a time of scarcity. It is more ambitious because it starts from a clear commitment to balance the books and more ambitious because it does not stop there."

The manifesto comes one day after the current Chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne failed to give a breakdown of how his party planned to fund a £8bn (€11bn) increase in health spending if the Conservatives are re-elected.

In the live BBC interview on The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Osbourne was asked the same question 18 times and could not offer a detailed answer.

Mr Miliband attempted to capitalise on the Conservatives' refusal to spell out how they would find the extra £8bn of funding for the NHS saying: "Nothing is more dangerous to our NHS than pretending you’ll be able to protect it without being able to say where the money’s coming from. You can't fund the NHS with an IOU and the Conservative Party need to learn that."

Among the pledges made in the 84-page Labour Party Manifesto 2015 are:

• Wrap around childcare - primary schools forced to provide care from 8am-6pm
• Raise minimum wage to £8 an hour
• Abolish non-dom rules, abolish zero-hour contracts
• £2.5bn Time to Care fund for NHS off back of mansion tax and tobacco firm levy
• Increase income tax for those earning more than £150,000
• Reintroduce the 10p starting rate of income tax
• Scrap winter fuel allowance for pensioners with an income of more than £42,000 a year
• Tighten tax avoidance rules to yield £7.5bn a year
• Scrap Married Couple’s Allowance
• Cap child benefit at 1%
• Cut tuition fees

Polls  show that voters trust Labour less with the economy than the Conservatives and Mr Miliband has struggled to play down forgetting to mention the deficit in his conference speech.

In the manifesto Labour vows only to eliminate the deficit as soon as possible while the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have said they will do so by 2017/18.

In an answer to recent criticism that Labour is against big business and wealth-creators, Mr Miliband said Labour was "pro business but not pro business as usual".

He said Labour would champion small and medium sized businesses with a cut in business rates to help them create the jobs, wealth and profits of the future.

Mr Miliband said he would champion the little man against the giant energy firms and painted himself as the man who would stand up for the little people against the powerful interests.

The Labour leader was speaking inside the building used in the long-running soap as Weatherfield Police Station.

Sky News Political Correspondent, Sophy Ridge said the decision to use the set could be seen as a metaphor for "hard-working, or ordinary, families" or could even be a knowing nod to the idea of a "political soap opera".

Additional reporting by IRN