Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is keen to shrink the state and let people have control over their own savings. It's strange then that on October 5 he announced a plan to grab £200 billion of council pension assets to try and direct them into the areas in which he personally would like them to invest.

We have been given few details of how this consolidation of the 89 council pension funds in England and Wales, the savings of 4.6 million people, will work. Crucially, will councils be given the option of investing in these new regional superfunds, or be forced to?