Rachel Reeves has a dangerous sense of entitlement to your wealth

Telegraph

14-05-2025

The Chancellor has now made it perfectly clear: your savings are not yours to do with what you like.
Rachel Reeves this week threatened to force firms to invest a portion of their pension cash in Britain if they did not agree to follow her rules.
She is also poised to finally announce a review into the future of Britain's Individual Saving Account (Isa) regime. Among the ideas she is considering is slashing the cash Isa limit down from £20,000 to £4,000 to encourage more savers to invest.
The justification for both of these acts of needless meddling will be both to boost growth in Britain and also improve outcomes for savers. The problem is neither of these are guaranteed and leaving it all well alone is likely to be a much smarter idea.
There can now be no doubt that Reeves is a Chancellor who believes that she can help herself to your money to gamble on growth. It wouldn't be so galling if she had not already launched a death duty raid on our pensions and triggered an economic crisis with her jobs tax.
To suggest that private companies could be forced to invest how the Government sees fit is a disgrace.
However, the real fear is that this is simply the thin end of the wedge. Former pensions minister Baroness Altmann has already suggested that pension savers should lose tax relief if they do not back Britain.
Reeves's pensions plot has already seen 17 major pension firms sign up to invest at least 10pc of assets in private markets, including half of that in British companies.
Yet the Government's own actuaries have advised her that this will have little or no impact, and the fees involved could wipe out any gains for individual savers.
None of this should be mandated, we should want to invest in Britain because it is an attractive thing to do, not because we are forced to.
Besides, there are plenty of other options available. Reeves could abolish stamp duty on investments by Britain's pension funds, or she could reinstate the tax relief Gordon Brown took away in 1997.
If Reeves is allowed to get away with this, there is no end to what powers Governments might exploit to get our money working harder for them and not us.
The victims will be those who are not engaged with their pensions. More astute savers will move their money out of so-called 'default' funds to make it work harder elsewhere.
And of course, one of the reasons why Britain is not an attractive place to invest is the heavy tax burden, partly enforced by Reeves, that is stifling growth.
The Chancellor is also poised to announce a second act of reckless interference – a shake-up of valuable tax-free Isas.
Now, if she were a progressive chancellor, Reeves would increase the annual allowances to catch up with inflation, or perhaps abolish inheritance tax on Isa savings.
But relaxing taxes to boost growth is not something she understands. This is a Chancellor who once said that the one thing she would change about the tax system was slashing pension tax relief for high earners.
These tax incentives exist to encourage people to save so they are not reliant on the state later in life.
Reducing the benefits of saving into cash Isas will only punish those who prudently save for their future. The only winners will be fund management firms in the City who will help themselves to more of your money through charges levied on stocks and shares investments.
Reeves wants you to invest for what is best for Labour's Britain, rather than you.
She has no right to dictate how we invest our money, it should be none of her business. Labour is building the ultimate nanny state – a Government that doesn't trust you to do what is best for you.
Above all, our pensions and savings are not playthings for a desperate Chancellor scrambling for growth.