Since the 1980s, we have had only one success in pension policy. Chancellor Rachel Reeves will now sink it with a £15bn tax raid in Wednesday’s Autumn Budget.

Millions of workers will pay the price in lower pensions and incomes for decades to come.

These are very “working people” Reeves and PM Keir Starmer they claim to protect. Instead, it is launching a shocking attack on their workplace pensions.

Just about everything that could have gone wrong with pension policy over the past five decades.

In the 1980s, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher encouraged employees to switch from generous occupational pensions to personal pensions in a bid to make the workforce more mobile.

This sparked the £11bn pension mis-selling scandal as commission-hungry advisers urged two million workers to switch to inferior personal pensions, destroying pensions.

There was a much bigger scandal in 1997 when the new Labor chancellor, Gordon Brown, launched a £200 billion pension tax raid.

This eliminated almost all final salary schemes in the UK private sector. Today, only public sector workers expect to receive gold-plated pensions that pay a guaranteed income based on service and salary.

In contrast, private sector pensions are a risky stock market gamble. Thanks to Gordon Brown.

I could add a number of pensions scandals to this list, including Maxwell pensioners, Equitable Life, British Steel, widows’ pensions and the Waspi debacle.

Personally, I think the jury is still out on the pension freedom reforms of 2015. But it was a great success.

Self-enrollment scheme for workplace pensions.

Launched in 2012, auto-enrolment was designed to give up to 10 million mostly lower-paid workers a company pension for the first time.

And that’s exactly what was done. It was a great success. It’s not perfect and needs to be built upon, but instead Reeves brings out his wrecking ball.

Under automatic enrolment, employers are required to enroll each eligible member of staff into a pension.

Employers must contribute 3% of employee earnings, the tax exemption adds 1% and workers pay 4%.

The total contribution is 8% of income. It’s not enough to guarantee a comfortable retirement, but it’s a brilliant start.

It should be untouchable.

Auto-enrollment has been configured with cross-party support. Now Labor is gunning for it. Something else Starmer failed to warn us about at the general election.

It’s a pension scandal happening right before our eyes and it needs to be stopped.

Reeves and Starmer seek to levy National Insurance on employer pension contributions.

The impact will be huge.

Companies will try to recoup costs by hiring fewer workers, capping future wage increases and paying only the minimum 3% into pensions.

Former Labor cabinet minister David Blunkett has warned it could lead to “rotten pensions” for millions, and he is not alone.

Former pensions minister Ros Altmann also criticized the “serious mistake”. As did another former pensions minister, Steve Webb.

We have had only one success in pension policy in half a century. And Reeves will break it in just three months. As with every other pension scandal, millions will pay the price long after the culprits have been removed from office.