A former Labour MP has been convicted of submitting a series of fraudulent expenses claims after a trial heard he had a serious cocaine addiction while in Parliament and owed thousands of pounds to a drug dealer.
Jared O’Mara, 41, defeated the then-Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, in the Sheffield Hallam constituency at the June 2017 general election.
Four months later he was suspended by Labour and lost the party whip after it emerged he had posted a series of sexist and homophobic remarks on social media a decade earlier.
O’Mara, who sat as an independent for two years, eventually resigned from the Labour Party and stood down at the December 2019 general election, being replaced by Labour’s Olivia Blake….