A former MP accused of expenses fraud was only chosen by Labour to contest a parliamentary seat because the party was thought he was bound to lose, a court has heard.
Jared O’Mara, 41, is standing trial at Leeds crown court accused of submitting fake invoices to fraudulently claim about £30,000 of taxpayer’s money to help fund a “substantial” cocaine habit.
O’Mara was the MP for Sheffield Hallam after defeating the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg at the 2017 election.
Gareth Arnold, 30, who was O’Mara’s chief of staff in 2019, described O’Mara’s victory as “a massive shock”.
He said: “I think 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.”
A jury has heard details of WhatsApp and phone messages between Arnold and O’Mara in which the MP was accused of being “shit-faced” before an interview with BBC Look North.
Answering questions put to him by his defence barrister, Arnold said he had worked hard to get an interview with a Times journalist and he told O’Mara “she’s prepared to be quite good to you, hopefully anyway”. When the time came for the interview, “he kind of hid and said ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it’. So that annoyed me,” he said.
O’Mara has cerebral palsy and is autistic. In one phone conversation, Arnold said, the MP complained he was being discriminated against because he was disabled. He was convinced that John Bercow, the speaker of the Commons, “had it in for him and was refusing to pay his invoices”, he said.
Arnold and O’Mara have been accused of submitting invoices for media and PR work which prosecutors say was never carried out. Giving evidence, Arnold said the work was real. He recalled sessions where the two men would role play with Arnold playing Jeremy Paxman.
The sessions could be quite ad hoc, Arnold said. “Sometimes it would be going down to speak to him for an hour and then that might wind up with six hours later me still pretending to be Jeremy Paxman.”
O’Mara has been given permission to follow the proceedings via video link from his home in Sheffield.
He had the opportunity to give evidence using the link but would not be doing so, the jury heard. O’Mara’s barrister, Mark Kelly KC, said he would not be calling any evidence.
O’Mara is accused of making four fraudulent claims from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism SY, and submitting two invoices from Arnold for media and PR work that prosecutors say was never carried out.
It is also claimed that O’Mara submitted a false contract of employment for a friend, John Woodliff, “pretending” that he worked as a constituency support officer.
O’Mara is charged with eight counts of fraud by false representation, with Arnold jointly charged with six of the offences, and Woodliff, 43, jointly charged with one.
All three men deny all charges. The trial continues.
