Rachel Reeves is hijacking YOUR pensions and ISAs in desperate bid to save her career

Rachel Reeves is pressing your pensions and Stocks and Shares ISAs into the service of the UK economy. And there's not much you can do about it.

In a desperate bid to generate growth and save her own reputation, Reeves is preparing to tell ordinary investors where to put their money.

Instead of leaving that decision down to you, she wants to direct tens of billions of our savings into areas that suit her.

The Chancellor is quietly rewriting the rules of the game, treating your hard-earned savings not as private investments but as tools of government policy.

You may think that your pensions and ISAs belong to you. Reeves appears to disagree.

She needs growth - fast. .

Thanks to her own blunders, the Chancellor is in a tight spot.

She caved into the Labour Party's worst instincts, by launching a £40billion tax raid in last October's Budget, while borrowing another £30billion.

And it's all gone wrong. Thanks to her "jobs tax", unemployment has climbed to a four-year high.

Reeves is now desperately hunting for ways to get the UK economy to grow again, and this is where your pensions and ISAs come into it.

She's hijacking them to fund her growth agenda and salvage her reputation. That money should be working for your future, not hers.

Reports suggest Reeves is considering forcing Stocks and Shares ISA investors to back UK companies, whether they want to or not.

She may and make at least some of the £20,000 Stocks and Shares ISA allowande .

ISA tax relief costs the Treasury £9.4billion a year. Reeves wants a better return on that giveaway.

Second, she's now signed up 17 major pension providers .

They will funnel £25billion into UK projects like housing and infrastructure and renewable energy, often by investing in smaller, unquoted companies.

Which as far as I can gather the government might even help choose.

She could go further. Former pensions minister Ros Altmann is urging Reeves to link tax relief on pension contributions to investing in UK plc.

Pensions tax relief costs the Treasury a staggering £70billion a year. Altmann urged Reeves to demand at least 25% of that goes into UK shares.

As yet, I don't know if Reeves will listen. But Altmann's idea would be consistent with the first two proposals.

To be fair, there is logic here. If the government is giving tax breaks, it probably does have the right to expect something in return.

Personal equity plans, or PEPs, the forerunner of today's ISAs, were largely limited to UK shares and nobody complained too much then.

But it does allow Reeves to play industrial strategist with other people's money. It's a dangerous precedent that could ultimately leave savers worse off

Reeves is also blurring the line between private investment and public subsidy.

Your pension or Stocks and Shares ISA isn't the Chancellor's war chest. It exists to fund your retirement, not to rescue the British stock market or her career.

If your money can do better invested in US shares - and lately it has done better, a lot - then that's where it should be.

British investors diversify globally for one reason, to get superior returns. Forcing them back into British assets risks leaving them poorer.

Worse, politically motivated investing often leads to disaster.

From green infrastructure to "social impact" projects, high-minded schemes have delivered disappointing results lately. But these are exactly the kind of ventures Labour is likely to champion.

One lone voice has raised the alarm. , warning that investment decisions should be based on returns, not geography. It's right.

This may be Reeves' only big idea for growth. But if it goes wrong, it won't be her pension that pays the price.

It'll be yours.