The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is cooking up another scheme - and this time, it's using your retirement savings to pay for her political agenda. Not content with targeting jobs through higher taxes, stripping pensioners of winter fuel payments and destroying the countryside with a family farm tax, Labour has now set its sights on the pension pots of hard-working Britons.

The UK has long taken a different approach to retirement savings compared to many of our OECD peers. Public spending on old age pensions here stands at just 4.7% of GDP, well below the OECD average of 7%. The trade-off has been clear: workers are expected to save for their own retirement through workplace pensions, and in return, those funds are given tax relief and protected. Meanwhile they are professionally managed to deliver the best possible outcomes.

That's the deal we've made with generations of British workers - save now, and your money will be managed wisely, with your best interests at heart. It's a model that has worked for decades.

Pensions aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet. They represent a lifetime of work, sacrifice, and hope for a secure future.

The people who manage these funds - fiduciaries - are under a legal duty to prioritise the financial wellbeing of savers.

Their job is not to play politics, but to invest prudently, to grow pension pots, and to uphold the trust placed in them by millions of ordinary people.

That fiduciary duty is not a technicality; it's the bedrock of confidence in the entire pensions system.

Those pension fund managers find the safest and best investments for our pensions, no matter when in the world they might be. If things go wrong, we can hold them to account.

Yet now, Labour plans to override that duty with a political directive. Under their proposal, pension funds would be forced to invest at least 10% of assets into what they define as "British Investments."

This is not a gentle encouragement or a voluntary scheme - it's a mandatory reallocation of risk, dictated by political convenience rather than financial sense.

Let's be clear: this is not about patriotism or supporting British business. It's about Labour trying to plug holes in its economic credibility by using our money.

And it comes at a time when investor confidence in Britain is already under strain due to Labour's own uncertain economic agenda.

Contrast that with the responsible approach of the previous Government. Through the Mansion House reforms, we struck a historic agreement with major pension funds, encouraging them to voluntarily invest 5% into UK growth assets.

That was a considered, market-led initiative aimed at unlocking capital for British innovation while respecting the rights of savers.

Labour's approach couldn't be more different. Rather than building confidence and working with the market, they're reaching for the bluntest of instruments: mandation.

And the timing couldn't be worse. Investors are already uneasy about Labour's fiscal plans. The last thing we should be doing is adding political risk to pension savings.

But most importantly, if these compulsory investments go wrong, who carries the can of responsibility, the pension fund managers or the Government?

Instead of rewriting the rules of fiduciary duty, built via hundreds of years of common trust law, the Government should get back to what it promised during the General Election -

delivering economic growth. Growth brings investment. Growth brings jobs. And with growth comes a natural incentive for fund managers to put money into UK opportunities.

The Mansion House reforms deserve time to work. They represent a strategic partnership between Government and pension funds - not an ideological shortcut.

But even more importantly, Labour must understand that pension pots are not playthings. They belong to the British people, not the Treasury.

It is deeply wrong to risk the hard-earned retirement savings of millions to fund Labour's pet projects.

If Labour believes in Britain's future, they should focus on building a stable, attractive investment environment - not raiding savings to paper over economic cracks of their own making.

Britain deserves better than a government that sees pensions as just another piggy bank to break open.