AUCTIONEERS admit they have no evidence to back up a claim that 12,000 new jobs will be created over the next five years at BAE Systems.

It comes after it was placed on two auctioneers’ websites advertising Salthouse Mills, an old Barrow paper mill, which goes up for auction in London with a guide price of £2.25m on Friday.

BAE Systems told the Evening Mail it was puzzled by the claim, while a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said he had not heard of it.

Advertising Salthouse Mills, the Erinaceous Auctioneers website reads: “The proposed contract for BAE Systems is reported to be worth £28bn and would be likely to create about 12,000 jobs over the next five years.”

The www.barrowland.net website, run by Barnard Marcus, which has been working with Erinaceous, reads: “It is understood this (Trident) will create up to 12,000 jobs with BAE systems over the next five years. This is obviously a very high tech industry so reasonable to assume job creation prospects will be at all skill levels with a massive demand flooding into the area for jobs, leisure and retail and business space for local industry supporting the project.”

But BAE Systems spokesman Chris Nelson said: “We certainly haven’t supplied any information. It will be 17 or 18 years before Trident would be produced. I am puzzled at this unless they’ve got these figures from the development agency.”

An MoD spokesman was equally baffled at where the figures had come from.

But Barnard Marcus agent Chris Glenn has since admitted the claim cannot be backed up and the information will be taken off its websites. Mr Glenn said: “The website should have been updated. Figures have been bandied around and someone must have picked up something from the press. There is no qualification behind it.”

Mr Glenn also revealed Salthouse Mills, which last went up for auction through Barnard Marcus, was never actually sold, contrary to some rumours. He said: “A deal was agreed but it never went unconditional.”

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Posted: 03|28|07 at 8:56 pm. Filed under: UK News.