'Chancellor Rachel Reeves's changes to ISA rules will not work'

Sometimes it seems we are too hard on Rachel Reeves. Yes, she is a bad chancellor: anti-business with no coherent vision for getting the economy growing and no backbone when she is pushed by her party. On the other hand, it has been seven years since Britain had at least a semi-competent chancellor, and she has inherited a catastrophic mess that would be a gigantic challenge even for an outstanding one.

One might briefly feel that she deserves some support as an under-qualified person trying to do an impossible job at the head of a sclerotic Treasury that needs to be broken up and rebuilt. Then you look at her proposed changes for individual savings accounts (ISAs) and all sympathy goes right out the window.

A brief history of ISA rules

To see why these ISA rule changes are so misguided and why they show Reeves and her team to be truly clueless about investing, let’s go back to when ISAs were first launched back in 1999. The ISA rules then were much more restrictive.

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You could pay up to £7,000 into a “Maxi Stocks & Shares ISA” each year, or up to £3,000 into a “Mini Stocks & Shares ISA”, up to £3,000 into a “Mini Cash ISA” and up to £1,000 into a little-used “Insurance ISA” that let you put money into with-profits funds from an insurance company (which in theory was supposed to be less volatile than investing directly in the stock market). You could transfer from a cash ISA to a stocks and shares ISA, but not the other way round. Interest on cash held in stocks and shares ISAs was taxed at 20%. Investments had to have a credible possibility of losing at least 5% of the capital. Bonds had to have at least five years remaining until maturity when they were purchased.

There were a few tweaks through the years before 2014 when then-chancellor George Osborne greatly improved the ISA rules: a higher annual limit of £15,000 could now be split between a cash ISA and a stock and shares ISA in whatever proportions you liked. Money could be freely transferred between both. Cash interest was no longer taxed in a stocks and shares ISA, and low-risk cash-like investments were allowed.

This was a huge step forward. Subsequent changes to ISA rules include flexibility, allowing you to take out money temporarily and put it back again without affecting your annual allowance. You can also now contribute to more than one ISA of each type each year. Today, the ISA is probably the best account of its kind in the world and has inspired similar products in other countries.

Set against this, new types of ISA added complexity. The Help to Buy ISA was a counterproductive attempt to solve the housing affordability crisis that is now a legacy zombie product. The Lifetime ISA's potential as a flexible retirement savings tool was weakened by overly tight age limits and by withdrawal penalties. The Innovative Finance ISA has been too niche for most investors. So further reforms were overdue.

What should happen is the merger of most types of ISAs to create a flexible general-purpose wrapper. All providers could choose what to offer in the wrapper – including cash, investments and innovative finance products – according to what kind of customers they wanted to serve. Lifetime ISAs would probably remain as a separate product with similar flexibility, but open to a wider age range, with fairer withdrawal rules and the ability to transfer in stranded Help to Buy ISAs.

Rachel Reeves's ISA rule changes would be a retrograde decision

Instead, Reeves and the Treasury came to believe that restricting the ability to hold cash would encourage more money to go into the UK stock market. So, unless there is a change of heart, ISAs will take a huge step backwards from April 2027.

Cash ISAs will have a lower annual contribution limit (£12,000 versus £20,000). You will be able to transfer from a cash ISA to a stocks and shares ISA, but not the other way. Cash-like investments such as money market funds will no longer be allowed in stocks and shares ISAs. Interest paid on cash held in stocks and shares ISAs will be taxed.

In other words, we are returning to many of the pre-2014 ISA rules. The degree of stupidity required to attempt this cannot be overstated. Whoever came up with this proposal does not appreciate what investors and savers need and has ignored all the clear benefits that previous reforms delivered.

MoneyWeek would be the first to agree that there is a problem with attitudes towards investing in Britain, but the current ISA rules have nothing to do with that. Quite the opposite: at present, you can put money into as many cash ISAs or stocks and shares ISAs as you like, transfer between them freely, and hold investments then move to cash in the same account if you are nervous about markets or you need to reduce risk. This flexibility is reassuring. Your money does not feel trapped.

Trying to coerce people to invest by restricting cash ISAs is not going to work. They will simply hold cash in taxable accounts instead rather than take risks they don’t want. Much more plausible reasons why people in the UK are unwilling to invest are i) regulators that have been far too keen to talk up the risks of mainstream investments while doing far too little to crack down on unregulated scams and ii) the ongoing national obsession with property.

Depressingly, Reeves’ other proposed ISA rule changes also include plans to end the Lifetime ISA and bring in a new Help to Buy ISA. Whether this will increasingly leave existing Lifetime ISAs as a zombie product, like the original Help to Buy ISA, remains to be seen. Regardless, it would clearly be another retrograde decision. And if the stock market remains moribund, it can only be a matter of time before the immensely idiotic idea of a “British ISA” limited to UK stocks – or, even worse, restricting international investments in all ISAs – also gets resurrected.

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