More than 98,000 West Midlands jobs advertised to European workers - Readers' poll

Critics have hit out at how jobs are uploaded onto a website set up so European Employment Services (EURES) can 'facilitate the free movement of workers within the European Economic Area'.

It comes seven months after Black Country Labour MP Ian Austin raised the matter with the government. But today he said he had received no reply.

The jobs are being advertised as Bulgarians and Romanians wait for restrictions on their ability to work in Britain to cease at the end of the year.

This week 98,155 job vacancies in the West Midlands were advertised online to workers across the continent. The UK has 976,369 posts online on EURES, dwarfing the number advertised by any other European Union member state – Germany has 293,838 while Spain has just 1,954.

The jobs, ranging from sales assistants to nurses, HGV drivers, personal assistants and sewing machinists, have all been posted on the EU's jobs website, mostly by the Government's Department for Work and Pensions.

Other jobs include engineering apprenticeships in Oldbury, a 'policy and performance consultation and engagement office' at Cannock Chase council paying up to £26,276, chief executive of a 'community interest company' funded by local authorities paying up to £60,000 and an NHS commissioning job worth up to £530 a day.

Mr Austin said: "There are many more British jobs being advertised on this website than any other country. I'm sure there are more than enough nurses and teachers here who could do the jobs being advertised."

The Department for Work and Pensions has said that under European treaty rules, all EU countries are 'obliged to share their job vacancies'.

But West Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass who this week resigned from UKIP,, said: "It does not make sense to encourage more immigration when we have so much unemployment and competition for jobs as it is."