Nigel Farage: Only Ukip MPs will tell the truth about immigration in Westminster

Ukip is the only political party that will tell the truth about immigration to the UK in the House of Commons, Nigel Farage has declared.

The Ukip leader made the claim as he unveiled the purple party's latest general election poster in Dover.

"My message to the British people is: If you want an honest debate about immigration, you've got to get a good number of Ukip MPs into Westminster next time around because we are the only people that will tell the truth," Farage said.

"And, by the way, we are not being negative about the subject, far from it. We believe once we've re-established border controls, the putting into place of an Australian style point system would actually give us the ability to control both the quantity and the quality of who comes to Britain."

The photo opportuntity comes a day after Farage revealed Ukip's election pledge card, which highlights five of the Eurosceptic party's main pledges.

The manifesto commitments included breaking away from the European Union (EU), a promise to control borders and bring down immigration, a £3bn ($4.44bn) increase in NHS spending, to cut foreign aid and not to tax workers on the minimum wage.

Ukip only have two MPs at the moment, in the shape of two Tory defectors, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless.

But Farage hopes to join them after May as he is contesting the South Thanet seat at the general election.

Prime Minister David Cameron fired the official starting gun of the general election campaign yesterday when he asked the Queen to dissolve parliament.

The Tory leader today promised to create an extra two million jobs over the next five years and urged voters to keep his "long-term economic plan" on track.

Labour, meanwhile, promised to cut business rates for small firms and reverse the government's 1% cut on corporation tax.

Elsewhere, Nick Clegg said a Liberal Democrat government would spend £3.5bn ($5.1bn) on mental health care in England.

The latest poll from TNS, which was conducted between 26 and 30 March, put Labour and the Tories neck-and-neck (32% vs 32%), with Ukip on 16%, the Liberal Democrats on 8% and the Greens on 5%.