INSTEAD of marking her daughter’s birthday with a cake and presents, Anne-Marie Cockburn will be taking a trip to Parliament.

On July 20 last year 15-year-old Martha Fernback died after collapsing at Hinksey Park, in South Oxford, after taking half a gram of Ecstasy powder.

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Following her daughter’s inquest earlier this year, Miss Cockburn, above, called for drugs to be regulated by doctors and pharmacists, saying those measures could have saved The Cherwell School pupil.

On Thursday, on what would have been Martha’s 17th birthday, Miss Cockburn will speak to MPs at Portcullis House, Westminster, before they review the country’s drug laws in a debate.

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The 43-year-old, from Summertown, said: “The only choice we have now is trying to prevent another Martha and another me.

“I can’t have what I really want, which is for it to never have happened – all that I can do is take positive actions.

“It’s not an easy thing to push for but it only takes a few people to be the brave ones, it’s safety in numbers.”

After Miss Cockburn speaks to them, MPs will debate a petition set up by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

Any petition that gets more than 100,000 signatures has to be debated by backbench MPs in the House of Commons.

Ms Lucas’s petition – demanding an impact assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 – got almost 135,000 signatures in two months.

They chose Martha’s birthday deliberately, so the discussion could mark the “poignant and significant date”.

Miss Cockburn said: “The ideal would be for them to push through an independent review which would be a 12-month process.

“The drug law needs to be reviewed; it hasn’t been looked at for over 40 years. We need a safety-first approach.

“Laws should be there to keep people safe and my daughter died under the current UK drug laws.”

Miss Cockburn said if there were stringent drugs testing laws Martha would not have taken such large quantities of Ecstasy, which was 91 per cent pure – compared to the average street-level purity of 58 per cent.

She added: “Recreational drugs need to be tested like pharmaceutical drugs.

“It’s about keeping kids safe if they are going to dabble. It’s not about the moral argument.”

After the debate, which Miss Cockburn will watch from the public gallery, she will return to Oxford for a quiet dinner with friends to remember her daughter.

She said: “I’m sure Martha would be proud of this. She was proud of me anyway.”

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