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

O’Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, was on trial at Leeds Crown Court for submitting “dishonest” invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

The 41 year old was convicted of trying to claim up to tens of thousands of pounds in taxpayers’ money to fund an “extravagant lifestyle – drink, cigarettes and, above all, cocaine”.

Prosecutors said the total value of the fraud was about £52,000.

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.

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

‘An inadequate individual’

O’Mara claimed he was in “poor mental health” at the time and was abusing the Class A drug in “prodigious quantities”.

Mark Kelly KC, defending O’Mara, said he was “an inadequate individual to cope with the stresses and strains of public life” and “resorted to taking drugs, alcohol and distancing himself in many respects from those that were around him”.

Co-defendant Gareth Arnold was found guilty of three out of six fraud charges, and a third defendant, John Woodliff, was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.

O’Mara and Arnold, 30, were both due to be sentenced at the same court on Thursday.

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‘Not a victimless crime’

Prosecutor James 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”.

The disgraced MP 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.