A Quaker grandmother who was sent to prison, due to a shortage of house arrest wrist tags which fitted her, is suing the Ministry of Justice for false imprisonment and breaches of human rights law.

Gaie Delap, a retired teacher from Bristol, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for climbing gantries over the M25, as part of a Just Stop Oil protest in 2022.

She was meant to be released on house arrest with a curfew – but Serco, the contractor overseeing prison services, could not find a wrist tag which fit her. She was unable to use an ankle monitor due to deep vein thrombosis.

Delap described her time at Eastwood Park Prison as being “a portal to an alien and confusing world”.

After three and a half months, a tag was found, but she spent the rest of her sentence “terrified” from the experience.

“When a state would rather lock up a retired teacher and grandmother in an overcrowded prison system than confront the crises we are protesting about, the justice system itself has failed,” Delap said.

She is being represented by the Good Law Project.