Leeds crown court hears how invoices submitted by former Labour MP who is facing eight fraud charges were ‘amateurish’
Jared O’Mara, the former MP on trial for submitting fraudulent expenses, tried to falsely claim thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money through the parliament disability budget, a court has heard.
O’Mara, who served as MP for Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, is facing eight counts of fraud totalling 30,000 and is accused of submitting fabricated invoices from a fictional autism organisation.
Georgia Wilson, the director of MP services at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), told Leeds crown court how suspicions were raised when the invoices for consultancy and training from an organisation called Confident About Autism SY were “amateurish” and missing key details.
The invoices, submitted in June 2019, were “inconsistent”, with different fonts and formatting, she said. They were also coming in “ad hoc”, submitted for budgets that were already used up and did not follow the basic procedures of Ipsa, the standards body set up to scrutinise MPs’ claims in the wake of the expenses scandal.
Ipsa normally asks MPs for evidence that any training or consultancy being invoiced for is an appropriate expense, which might include evidencing training course materials. But O’Mara was unable to provide any supporting evidence to go with the claims, Wilson told the court.
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