Suicide Prevention

Jacob Collier Excerpts

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Collier (Burton and Uttoxeter) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher), and I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), on her powerful speech.

I welcome the conversation that we, as a country, are having about mental health, because every community has a story where lives have been lost, and my constituency is no different. Helena Markey went to my school, de Ferrers, and was in the year below me. I still remember her smile, which would light up any room. On 10 September 2015, she passed away after jumping into the path of a vehicle. She was just 17. It shocked our school community. It shocked our local community. A young life with so much potential and so much to give to the world was taken away from us. Weeks before Helena died, she received her exam feedback and was considering her options for year 13. She became very distressed about the results and would later go on to take her own life. Helena’s parents were completely unaware of just how upset she had become.

I have been working with Helena’s incredible parents, Glen and Sharron Markey, since my election, and have been supporting them on their Smile4Helena campaign, which aims to change the Department for Education’s guidance to schools to ensure that they notify parents if a pupil becomes distressed during their results feedback. Glen and Sharron believe that just a simple phone call to them about Helena’s distress would have meant that they could have gone and picked her up from school, and that would have saved her life; they could have talked her through that situation and got through it together. We are seeking a meeting with the new Schools Minister to ensure that what happened to Helena does not happen to any other young person. I would be grateful if the Minister could use his good offices to assist with that.

The key to mental health support is talking and being open with each other about the challenges that we all face. It is about not just the investment that we need in mental health crisis services, but front-loading that into preventive support. That is why I believe that the Government’s plan for mental health hubs, and the increase in the number of mental health counsellors, are so important.

Locally, there are so many people who support others to open up about their mental health, including the Sexual Abuse Rape Advice Centre or Sarac, Burton YMCA, Burton and District Mind, BAC O’Connor and those, like Andy’s Man Club, that are looking to set up in Burton and Uttoxeter. I pay tribute to all those organisations; they save lives every single day, even if they do not know it.

We owe it to Helena, her family and every young person in this country to do better—to create a culture where no one suffers in silence, where families are kept informed and where the right support is there at the right time. I ask the Minister to reaffirm our shared commitment to building a system that catches young people before they fall, because behind every statistic is a life, a family and a future. If by making changes we can prevent just one more family from experiencing the heartbreak that happened to the Markeys, then it will be worth it.