A £300 million agency set up to improve the West Midlands economy has been accused of "appalling practices" in a dossier sent to John Prescott.
MEP Philip Bradbourn (Con West Midlands) wrote to Mr Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, claiming Advantage West Midlands had destroyed jobs by making a series of mistakes.
AWM is one of nine Regional Development Agencies set up across Britain by the Government to help businesses, provide training and regenerate disused land.
It will spend a budget of almost £1 billion over the next three years. But Mr Bradbourn said it was a waste of money and local councils could do the job more efficiently.
An AWM spokesman said Mr Bradbourn had got his facts wrong, and the agency had created or safeguarded 88,000 jobs in the past five years. In the dossier, Mr Bradbourn accuses AWM of making promises to business and them breaking them.
He said: "Advantage West Midlands have made binding promises to a sizeable number of companies and organisations. These have then invested heavily and built business plans around these promises, only to be told at the last minute that Advantage West Midlands will not honour their side of the bargain.
"Unemployment has been the direct result in a number of cases."
The dossier outlines a number of examples, including: n Firms which lost contracts because AWM pulled out of agreements at short notice. n Regeneration projects which lost European grants because AWM delayedmaking decisions. n Technology being lost to China and Spain because AWM failed to support West Midland firms.
Mr Bradbourn said: "I have now written to the highest possible level to ask what will be done to rectify the situation at Advantage West Midlands and will continue to work rigorously in stopping this waste of taxpayers money."
An AWM spokesman said: "We make no apology for making sure taxpayers' money is spent properly, and that means we evaluate every project very carefully." He challenged the examples included in the dossier. "Many of these are very vague and we have not been able to work out which projects he is referring to. Others are simply wrong."
