A former Labour MP has been convicted of submitting a series of fraudulent expenses claims after a trial heard he had a serious cocaine addiction while in Parliament and owed thousands of pounds to a drug dealer.
Jared O’Mara, 41, defeated the then-Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, in the Sheffield Hallam constituency at the June 2017 general election.
Four months later he was suspended by Labour and lost the party whip after it emerged he had posted a series of sexist and homophobic remarks on social media a decade earlier.
O'Mara, who sat as an independent for two years, eventually resigned from the Labour Party and stood down at the December 2019 general election, being replaced by Labour’s Olivia Blake.
On Wednesday a jury at Leeds Crown Court found him guilty of six counts of fraud by false representation.
His chief of staff, Gareth Arnold, 30, was convicted of three of six offences and a friend of O'Mara’s, John Woodliff, was acquitted on the only charge he faced.
Judge Tom Bayliss, KC, said O'Mara had faked invoices totalling £24,000 to fund his “extravagant lifestyle: drink, cigarettes and, above all, cocaine.”
O'Mara and Arnold will be sentenced on Thursday.
Four of the charges O'Mara was convicted of referred to making fraudulent claims to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) between June and August 2019 from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire.
O’Mara was acquitted of submitting a false contract of employment for Woodliff as a constituency support officer.
‘Dishonest’ or Just ‘Incompetent’?
O'Mara’s defence lawyer claimed he had been “incompetent” rather than “dishonest.”Mark Kelly, KC, said in his closing speech that O’Mara and Arnold “clearly don’t understand how formal the process is, how rigid the process is.”
Kelly said of his client, “Was he acting dishonestly or is he simply failing to follow proper procedures because of administrative ignorance or incompetence?”
Arnold, who was the only defendant to give evidence, told jurors he had “absolutely” done the media and PR work on both invoices.
Arnold said O'Mara sacked most of his staff “overnight” in April 2019, became an “absentee MP” and relied heavily on him.
Under cross-examination from prosecutor James Bourne-Arton, Arnold said he saw bags of cocaine in O'Mara’s bathroom during a party.
“It was very much an open secret that he took cocaine in Sheffield. You just had to look at his Twitter, he was making jokes about it,” said Arnold.
Asked by Bourne-Arton why O'Mara had taken out £7,000 in cash during a single month, Arnold said, “I would not be surprised if it was cocaine, alcohol, and cigarettes.”
MP Alleged to Have Taken Up to 5 Grams of Cocaine a Day
Arnold said O'Mara was drinking “a bottle of vodka” and taking “up to five grams” of cocaine a day during the spring and summer of 2019.
Bourne-Arton read out a message Arnold sent to a friend in April 2019, in which he said, “He’s a few k in debt with a dealer.”
“That’s a very dangerous game that. He wants to be careful no bad lads come for him. He’s on 80k a year,” replied the friend.
In June 2019 Arnold sent a WhatsApp message saying he looked drunk or high before an interview on the BBC’s “Look North” programme.
Arnold added, “It’s you who does cocaine instead of going to Parliament.”
Later that month Arnold went to the police because, he said, he was unwilling to “participate in the fraud” any longer.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Shields confirmed he spoke to Arnold about O'Mara’s mental state, his use of cocaine, and the IPSA invoices.
O'Mara, who has cerebral palsy and autism, was chosen as Labour’s candidate while Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the party, but there have been questions about whether he was thoroughly vetted or whether they thought he was just a “paper candidate” in an unwinnable seat.
Arnold told the trial O'Mara did not think he would defeat Clegg at the 2017 election and he said becoming an MP was a “massive shock” to him.
“In the case of Mr. O’Mara, they just thought there’s no way this guy is going to win at all … and then he won,” said Arnold.
He added: “If you put it in crude terms, I’ve gone from working in a pub to being an MP. But it’s about time we had some more normal people round here. I’m the right side of 40, and I’d like Parliament to stop patronising the young.”
