On 16 October, Baroness Masham of Ilton put a question to the Government in the House of Lords about the risk to health and safety of being stung by a hornet. Her question was prompted by the death in July this year of her friend's son-in-law after he had stepped on a hornet on the bathroom floor. The man died from anaphylactic shock caused by a severe reaction to the hornet venom.

The death of a man with 3 young children is a terrible tragedy and there is always a feeling that something must be done to prevent it happening in future. I guess if you're a Peer of the Realm, you feel that you're in a position to ensure that something is done. But of course, Peers of the Realm are just as susceptible as the rest of us to having their clarity of risk perception clouded by personal involvement in a rare event.

Before going to the House to hear the Government's response to her question, the Baroness popped into the BBC's Westminster studio to promote her cause on the radio. The BBC invited Stuart Hine, Manager of the Insect Information Service at the Natural History Museum, to participate in the discussion. He confirmed that there had been an increase in the hornet population recently, due to mild winters, but no, there was no serious risk of being stung to death by hornets: "I doubt if there's been another single death attributed to hornet sting in the last, you know, 15-20 years in the UK."

As for the Baroness's suggestion that killer hornets were coming over from France, the insect man assured her that was definitely not the case. With the two main planks of her campaign so firmly dismissed by the expert, Baroness Masham appeared to have little enthusiasm left for the interview: "Er, and um, there seem to be lots of things coming over from Europe, er, which we haven't had before so, um, one needs to look into it."

Later that day...

Lord Rooker, Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stood up in the House of Lords to try and answer the question from Baroness Masham. He admitted that he had learned more from searching the Internet and listening to the insect expert on the radio than he had been able to discover from Government sources: "My Lords, information on hornets is not kept by the Government. .. The Anaphylaxis Campaign estimates that every year in the UK anaphylaxis from insect stings results in between two and nine deaths." This is a very small probability, about 1 in 10 million, about the same as the chance of being killed by lightning. And that's the figure for all insects, not just hornets.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, who is also President of the Royal Society of Medicine, tried to come to the assistance of her Lady Friend: "My Lords, I declare an interest, having chaired the Science and Technology Committee inquiry into allergy and want to follow up the points made... Do [the Government] recognise that the hornet, being more vicious than the wasp, is associated with anaphylaxis and that the tragedy is that young people die?"

Actually, the hornet is one of 9 species of wasp found in the UK and the hornet is probably the least aggressive of them all (according to Stuart Hine and Government information leaflets). And young people almost never die from anaphylaxis as a result of insect stings, with 80% of cases in people over 40 years old.

Which all goes to show how difficult it is to obtain relevant and correct information that will inform our risk perception for extremely rare events.

The Anaphylaxis Campaign

Example of UK Government information leaflet

Information relating to the situation in the US