A union leader has dubbed Britain's economic growth as "phoney", with workers increasingly struggling to make ends meet.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, said millionaires were thriving while growing numbers of families were having to rely on food banks and payday loans.

He told a packed fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in Manchester that an increasing number of economists were agreeing with unions that the recovery was "unsustainable".

He said: "There will be no sustainable recovery unless people are paid decent wages in real jobs. We are witnessing a phoney growth, based on personal debt."

Mr McCluskey described Britain as a nation of "zero hours, food banks and payday loans", where inequality was widening

"We have constantly argued that there is an alternative to austerity. It is a lie to say Britain has no money - a quarter of a trillion pounds is sitting in banks, while small and medium-sized firms are desperate for loans so they can put people back at work."

The Unite leader attacked zero hours contracts as a "cancer" spreading throughout industry.

"We are asked to believe that 4.5 million people are self employed, but that figure is a nonsense.These are people with no contracts, no rights, scrambling from day to day."