Rachel Reeves has the reverse Midas touch. Instead of turning things to gold, her leaden touch breaks them. Then, when the damage becomes obvious, she clumsily tries to glue the pieces back together, like a guilty child repairing a vase they’ve just smashed. Look at the winter fuel payment. Once simple, it’s now so tangled that nobody quite understands who qualifies anymore.

Her half-hearted attempts at welfare reform collapsed too, generating plenty of noise but little in the way of savings. In her maiden Budget, she crushed the jobs market by hiking employers’ National Insurance by £26billion. Since then, unemployment has jumped from 4.1% to 5.1%, and looks set to rise further. She even managed to break farming, by slapping inheritance tax on farmers, only to reverse the policy and replace it with another convoluted mess.

I don’t have space to unpick last November’s Budget, but it was the most chaotic I’ve witnessed in 30 years of financial journalism.

Reeves has become a one-woman wrecking ball, killing economic growth through constant tax raids and speculation, driving wealth creators abroad, and threatening one of Britain’s greatest assets, all while insisting she’s “restoring stability” and “fixing the foundations”.

But there was something else buried in that first Budget that deserves attention. Something so mean-spirited and badly designed that even the House of Lords has now demanded a rethink. And it’s a nightmare for pensioners.

In October 2024, Reeves announced that unused defined contribution pension pots, the kind invested in the stock market, would be subject to inheritance tax from April 2027.

At present, people can pass on what’s left of their pension free of IHT. Labour hates that, even though beneficiaries may pay income tax on withdrawals if the saver dies after age 75.

Apparently, that’s not enough. Reeves decided HMRC should have two bites of the tax cherry. First inheritance tax, then income tax. A double death tax. For a higher-rate taxpayer, a £100,000 pension pot could shrink to just £36,000. That’s an effective total tax rate of 64%. Brutal.

This alone will push pensioners into difficult decisions. Many will withdraw money early to avoid the tax, risking running out of funds later. Others may gift it, only to fall foul of inheritance tax anyway if they die within seven years. Anxiety and confusion are baked in. But it gets worse.

Characteristically, Reeves hasn’t thought through the practical consequences. Under her plan, executors must trace every pension the deceased ever had, calculate the IHT due, and pay it. All within six months of death.

That’s a herculean task, performed while grieving. Executors, usually unpaid relatives or friends acting out of goodwill, face an administrative nightmare. Pension providers can take months to reply to questions and produce pots. Many people could have six or seven of them. But fail to pay by the deadline, and the estate will be hit with interest at a punitive 8%. Worse still, executors will be personally liable if any money goes astray.

Experts have warned this will cause chaos, misery and distress on a grand scale. And they’re right. Many executors will rue the day they agreed to help. And pensioners will find it harder to get loved ones to help with their affairs, causing yet more anxiety right at the end of their lives.

Incredibly, Reeves has found a way to make death even worse. Pensioners will spend their final years worrying about complex tax traps, while their families inherit a bureaucratic disaster at the worst possible moment. It’s yet another botched policy courtesy of our Chancellor. At least she’s consistent. Right to the end.