His promise to overhaul house building and build a million homes by 2020 will be the centrepiece of Labour’s manifesto at the 2015 election.

Miliband said Labour would set up a “rebuilding Britain commission” tasked with stimulating house building and delivering a new generation of garden cities and new towns.

Led by former BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons, the commission would work with councils to identify sites for new towns and prepare a legislative framework for Labour to start building immediately if it wins the 2015 general election.

He said towns would be given “a right to grow” over their boundaries even when house building was opposed by neighbouring local authorities responsible for planning decisions.

Developers sitting on land banks will be pushed into action with a “use it or lose it” law.

This could include stronger powers for councils to buy and grant planning permission on land banked sites considered to be hampering wide-scale development.

Labour is also considering giving councils power to charge developers escalating fees for not building out sites with planning.

Ahead of the next election Labour plans to draw up a list of sites for new towns and garden cities to give it a running start at getting Britain building again.

Labour said the house building push would be driven by closer partnerships between councils, housing association and volume and smaller house builders.

It has identified smaller house builders as holding untapped potential to deliver a boost in house building rates.

The Coalition Government’s stimulus measures have favoured the volume builders at the exclusion of smaller local builders.

Shadow housing secretary Jack Dromey said two thirds of the homes built used to be by SMEs, but now that had dropped to just one third.

Labour aims to develop measures that will unlease the potential of these house building firms.