Rachel Reeves' Mais Lecture identified a stark investment gap: UK pension schemes invest just 8% of listed equities domestically, while Canadian funds invest 22%. This isn't about patriotism — it's about which savers capture returns from Britain's "crown jewel" assets.

Consider two pension schemes eyeing the same UK infrastructure project — Manchester Digital Campus or Orkney Renewable Energy. The Canadian fund, with scale, longer term funding horizons and operating under more flexible rules, can hold illiquid growth assets for decades. The UK scheme – fenced in by fragmentation and mark-to-market liability measurement, exacerbated by accountancy rules and regulatory constraints – faces impossible barriers to making the same investment economically viable.

The result? Foreign pension members enjoy returns from British productivity growth while UK schemes are relegated to low-yield bonds and gilts. This isn't just inefficient — it's a national security concern when critical infrastructure ends up on foreign balance sheets.

Reeves announced £120 billion in public investment designed to crowd in private capital. But without regulatory reform, that private capital will be Canadian, Australian, and Singaporean — not British.  The Treasury must act now: reduce the constraints on investment in long-term productive assets, enable life insurers to compete internationally as patient capital providers, and ensure the returns from Britain's growth accrue to British citizens who funded it through taxation.

The Mais agenda cannot succeed through our existing UK pensions and insurance channels under current rules.