All rise! Just over three years after quitting parliament, Jared O’Mara now finds himself in court rather than the Commons. The former Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam stands accused of making fake expense claims during his time in Westminster to fund a ‘significant cocaine habit’.
On the first day of his trial at Leeds crown court, the jury heard how O’Mara is accused of trying to swindle £30,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund his ‘heavy addiction’.
According to the prosecution, O’Mara tried to pass off the claims as payments related to a fictional charity called ‘Confident About Autism South Yorkshire’. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority(IPSA) was quick to flag the payments and rejected them after suspecting they might not be valid. Evidence shown to the court suggests that the fake charity invoices were ‘in different formats, have inconsistent references and in one case was dated for a date after it was submitted for payment’.
According to the prosecution, O’Mara was planning to split the money from fake expense claims with two of his co-accused colleagues, Gareth Arnold and John Woodliff. Prosecutors further said that his former chief of staff Arnold told the police he was ‘no longer willing’ to try to hoodwink parliament.
The jury was played Arnold’s phone call to the police from July 2019 in which he said: ‘It’s a bit of a tricky one but yesterday I spoke to the 999 service and the mental health crisis team about my employer, who I believe is suffering a severe psychotic episode and has delusions of a conspiracy against him.
‘I also believe he has been submitting fake expense claims to the government very recently.’
O’Mara, Arnold and Woodliff deny the charges. The trial continues.
