Jared O'Mara: Former MP found guilty of fraudulent expenses claims

Jared O'Mara served as MP for Sheffield Hallam from June 2017 to November 2019

A former MP who submitted fake expense claims for £24,000 to fund his cocaine habit has been convicted of fraud.

Jared O'Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, was thousands of pounds in debt to a drug dealer, the trial at Leeds Crown Court was told.

He submitted fraudulent invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the body which regulates MPs' business costs and pay.

O'Mara was found guilty at trial of six counts of fraud and cleared of two.

The court heard O'Mara, 41, made four claims to IPSA for a total of £19,400 for services he said had been provided by a "fictitious" organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire.

Prosecutors said the former politician had used the postcode of a McDonald's restaurant in the city as the company's business address.

He was also found guilty of trying to claim £4,650 for services he said his "chief of staff" Gareth Arnold had provided to him.

All the invoices were rejected by IPSA due to a lack of detail about the work carried out, the jury was told.

O'Mara was elected to Parliament for Labour in June 2017, unseating former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, but quit the party the following year and became an independent after he was suspended by the party over comments he'd posted online before becoming an MP.

Co-defendant Arnold, 30, was found guilty of three counts of fraud relating to the bogus autism organisation and not guilty of three other fraud charges.

After the verdicts were returned, O'Mara, who had attended the entire 12-day trial remotely, was told he must attend the sentencing in person.

Judge Tom Bayliss KC told him: "I've permitted you until now to attend via videolink, I'm afraid that indulgence has now ceased."

Text and WhatsApp messages between O'Mara and Arnold were read out during the trial, including references to drug use and abandoning an expenses claim already rejected by IPSA four times.

"I think any more pushing will raise alarms," a message read out to court said.

Meanwhile a message in April 2019 from Arnold to a friend said O'Mara was "a few k in debt with a dealer", with the friend replying: "That's a very dangerous game that. He wants to be careful no bad lads come for him. He's on 80k a year."

One message in June 2019 saw Arnold writing he had "just smashed loads of coke" with "local MP".

Third defendant John Woodliff was cleared of a charge of fraud

Another from Arnold to O'Mara said the then-MP had been intoxicated before appearing on BBC Look North, with the court told he had drunk a litre of vodka before the TV interview.

Arnold, the only defendant of the three who elected to give evidence during the trial, described his former employer's cocaine taking as an "open secret" in Sheffield, adding O'Mara had used "five grams a day" at one stage, along with a "bottle of vodka" and "60 cigarettes".

Aside from the headlines this case has provided, it has also raised important questions about the process of selecting candidates.

Labour won't say anything on the record about his nomination, but I understand it was a mixture of a lax selection process and time pressures during a snap general election.

O'Mara had been interviewed previously as a potential Labour candidate for the local council elections. He wasn't interviewed as part of the MP selection process.

In 2017 we were all given only seven weeks' notice of the general election.

These things, combined with the fact Labour thought they had no chance of kicking former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg out of Sheffield Hallam, meant they quickly selected Jared O'Mara as their candidate.

Labour sources have told me that the selection and vetting process have since improved.

Mark Kelly KC, representing O'Mara, told the court his client had autism, was born with cerebral palsy and was suffering from anxiety and depression at the time of the offences.

He asked jurors to consider whether O'Mara was acting "dishonestly or incompetently" in filing the expenses claims under examination.

O'Mara was also found guilty of submitting a false contract of employment for a third defendant John Woodliff, "pretending" he worked as a constituency support officer.

Mr Woodliff, 46, of Hesley Road, Shiregreen, who faced one charge of fraud, was cleared of any wrongdoing.

O'Mara, of Walker Close, Sheffield, and Arnold, of School Lane, Dronfield, Derbyshire, are due to be sentenced on Thursday.