Yet again Labour eyes up private pensions

ONE of Gordon Brown’s first acts on becoming chancellor in 1997 was to plunder private pension funds via a crippling £5.6billion a year tax raid.

The effect was to kill off final salary schemes outside the public sector and sow huge instability from which the system has not fully recovered.

Now, it seems Labour is planning to target pension funds again, this time by potentially forcing them to transfer 5 per cent of their capital (estimated at £50billion) into a ‘growth fund’. The idea is that this fund would invest more heavily in higher-risk, fast-growing UK companies rather than more stable assets, such as gilts.

But do most pension savers want more risks to be taken with their money? And who would administer this fund and dictate where its money would go?

The head of Schroders, one of the City’s biggest asset managers, warns that such state interference in private pensions could have dire effects.

But based on past record, Labour will find the temptation impossible to resist. Indeed, as Sir Keir Starmer’s policy platform begins to emerge from the fog of obfuscation, it’s becoming clear it will be far more Left-wing than he will admit.

Proposals for a self-defeating North Sea drilling ban have raised cheers from the eco-zealots of Just Stop Oil (funded by major Labour donor Dale Vince).

There are plans for punitive tax raids on independent schools, which would force many out of business. Sir Keir would drive wealthy foreign individuals out of Britain by ending ‘non dom’ status and there are strong rumours of planned increases in inheritance and capital gains taxes.

It is an interventionist agenda fuelled by the politics of envy.

Traditional Conservative voters are understandably angry over the chaos of recent times and may be tempted to give their party a bloody nose at the next election. Before doing so they should look very carefully at the alternative.

Jeremy Corbyn may have been banished but his statist, class-warrior spirit is still very much alive in today’s Labour Party.