The fall of former Labour MP Jared O’Mara has been just as dramatic as his rise.
Six years after being thrust into the political spotlight by ousting former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg from his Sheffield Hallam seat in a major upset at the 2017 general election, O’Mara has been convicted of six counts of fraud.
The 41-year-old faces a potential prison sentence after he and his chief of staff tried to submit fake expense claims worth around £24,000, as the politician looked for ways to fund what was described in court as an “extensive” cocaine habit.
On an almost daily basis he took 5g of the class-A drug, while also downing a bottle of vodka and smoking 60 cigarettes, the court was told during his two-week trial at Leeds Crown Court.
O’Mara’s election to parliament was described by some as a breath of fresh air for politics - a world dominated by men from a certain demographic.
“You don’t see people like me – young, working-class lads with disabilities – in parliament, but now you’re going to,” he said after his shock election against the Liberal Democrat heavyweight Mr Clegg, who just a few years earlier had formed a government with David Cameron.
He partied until 6am the following morning, before later turning up to thank campaigners a little worse for wear - perhaps a sign of what was to come.
Just three months after beating Mr Clegg in what was a safe Lib Dem seat, O’Mara’s career quickly ran into trouble when he was suspended by Labour over accusations he posted misogynistic, homophobic and racist comments online more than a decade earlier.
His short two years as an MP were marred by a string of controversies, his resignation from the Labour Party after being re-admitted, sexual harassment allegations, staff resignations and sackings in addition to complaints from constituents. He resigned in July 2019.
O’Mara, who has cerebral palsy, had initially been seen as a disability rights campaigner and became an advocate for the cause but the court heard that he did little work for his constituents and rarely showed up to his local office in Sheffield or parliament.
His friend John Woodliff, a former bouncer and milkman who said he almost as an unofficial personal assistant for O’Mara, said he would go to the MP’s house and “pretty much get him up because he just lay in bed all day”.
He told police that O’Mara’s house would often be littered with pizza boxes. Woodliff sometimes helped the MP to get ready, putting on his shoes and socks because the MP had ripped tendons in his arm and was incapacitated on one side.
“To be honest, he was slowly but surely getting worse,” Woodliff said. “There were days when I went down, he was drunk and it used to be 10 in the morning.”
Witnesses who gave evidence at Leeds Crown Court painted a picture of a man struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues and a job he was unprepared for.
"Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it," O’Mara admitted to his supporters after the 2017 general election win.
O’Mara was convicted of six counts of fraud after trying to claim around £24,000 of taxpayers’ money for work that was never carried out and jobs that did not exist. He was reported to South Yorkshire Police by his chief of staff, Gareth Arnold.
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. Mr 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, 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.
Arnold, who became O’Mara’s chief of staff in June 2019, was found guilty of three fraud charges and cleared of three.
O’Mara will be sentenced later on Thursday.
