Former Labour MP Jared O'Mara sentenced to four years in prison for fraud

Former MP Jared O’Mara has been sentenced to four years in prison for making fraudulent expenses claims to fund an “extensive” cocaine habit.

O’Mara, 41, was convicted of six counts of fraud after trying to claim around £52,000 of taxpayers’ money for work that was never carried out and jobs that did not exist.

The jury at Leeds Crown Court cleared him of two other charges.

Jared O'Mara speaking in the House of Commons in June 2017.
PA

The former Labour MP represented the constituency of Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, and went on trial for submitting “dishonest” invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019.

Leeds Crown Court heard he made four claims for a total of £19,400 from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire, which jurors were told referred to his friend John Woodliff.

O’Mara was also found to have submitted a false contract of employment for Woodliff, pretending he worked as a constituency support officer.

Prosecutors said the total value of the fraud was about £52,000, including Woodliff’s proposed salary of £28,000.

Woodliff was cleared by the jury of having any role in the fraud.

O’Mara was found not guilty of two fraud charges over invoices from another friend, Gareth Arnold, for media and PR work that prosecutors claimed was never carried out.

But he was convicted of an offence of fraud after emailing Ipsa in February 2020, falsely claiming the police investigation into him had been completed and he was entitled to be paid the two invoices relating to Arnold, which totalled £4,650.

Opening the case to jurors just over two weeks ago, prosecutor James Bourne-Arton said: “O’Mara viewed Ipsa, and the taxpayers’ money that they administered, as a source of income that was his to claim and use as he wished, not least in the enjoyment of his extensive cocaine habit.”

Bourne-Arton said the fraud was not a victimless crime and that it had an impact on other MPs “because it undermines public trust and confidence in them”.

Mark Kelly KC, defending O’Mara, said he wanted to apologise to his constituents “for his failure to resign in October 2017” when controversial comments he made online before becoming an MP were revealed.

“When he felt that he was being hounded by the media, whether that is the case or not, he felt under pressure from the media for certain circumstances that had come to light,” Mr Kelly said.

O’Mara won Sheffield Hallam for Labour from former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg in 2017, but later left the party after a series of controversies.

He stayed in office as an independent MP but did not contest the 2019 general election.