A young Carlisle mum has been jailed after police caught her transporting a £240,000 shipment of illicit drugs.

Tyler Clark, 24, was a one-time courier in a massive supply plot that was smashed last year by police who seized drugs worth almost £1 million.

Masterminded by a serving prisoner Patrick White, the conspiracy involved 17 others, including her Carlisle-based partner James Kennedy.

It involved flooding Cumbria with drugs from elsewhere in the north west.

Those 17 were sentenced at the city's crown court in July when prison terms totalling around 100 years were handed down by Judge Barbara Forrester.

Kennedy, 24, was jailed for 16 months. Clark, who admitted conspiring to supply cocaine and cannabis, was allowed to skip that hearing because she has just given birth.

But as she sat in the dock at Carlisle Crown Court today (Monday) she sobbed as she heard her sentence. She was jailed for a year.

Prosecutor Brendan Burke said that Clark's vehicle was stopped on the M6 near Carlisle on May 14 last year.

Evidence showed she had made a trip to the Merseyside and Stockport areas.

Mr Burke said she had probably been recruited by her partner but acted under the direction of a more serious defendant, Carlisle man James Blacklock.

"He was probably using her because he was disqualified from driving and didn't want to run the risk of being stopped for that kind of offence while employed in something far more serious," said the prosecutor.

Police found 1kg of high purity cocaine and 5kg of herbal cannabis in Clark's car, in which Blacklock was a passenger. The drugs haul had an estimated street value of £240,000.

Clark claimed initially she had mental health problems and merely went along "for the company".

"She was a small cog in the Patrick White machine, albeit it is a cog that was essential because someone has to do the driving from the north west to Cumbria," added Mr Burke.

Andrew Nuttall, defending, said Clark, of Edgehill Road, Harraby, was "vulnerable" and mentally fragile.

He asked for any prison sentence to be suspended due to her "miraculous" progress in recent months.

She had moved "heaven and earth" to improve the situation for herself and her children, said the barrister.

But Judge Forrester noted the fact Clark had attended court in July and left her two-day baby with family elsewhere in the building while she supported her partner, Kennedy, in court.

She said she could not suspend the prison sentence, saying: "This was a very serious supply of drugs into this area."