Just why did Michael Gove campaign for Brexit? I thought he was selling us a future with a more entrepreneurial attitude and less meddlesome regulations. This week we are going to find out just how committed he is to lighter regulations when he announces legislation to force owners of holiday lets to obtain planning permission and to enter their properties on a local register. In other words, he has given in to the Nimbys who don’t like having holidaymakers staying in their street and the hoteliers who find self-catering accommodation inconvenient competition to their own business model.

Why trash the tourist industry, one of the few burgeoning export industries we have? What Gove is pushing is yet one more way in which wealth is being transferred from people who provide a useful service, which people want to pay for, to the parasitic wing of the economy: the bit that regulates us under pain of fines and fees. The result – as has already happened in Wales, where the Labour administration has already declared war on holiday lets – will be less accommodation, higher prices and fewer people able to afford to holiday in Britain. It will raise greedy councils a bit more money in planning fees, but they will ultimately lose out as fewer people take holidays in their areas – perhaps taking their money to the Costas instead.

His plans won’t help people on low incomes afford a home

I have an interest to declare in that my wife owns a small holiday let in Scotland, where the SNP has already introduced a licensing scheme for holiday lets. It is pure, footling bureaucracy, costing more than £1,000 every three years just for the right to do what she has been doing for years, helping to bring money into the local economy. We’re not personally complaining, though. The licensing scheme has kicked a lot of the less profitable holiday lets out of the market, pushing up prices and increasing the occupancy rates for those which remain. But the losers are those who want affordable holiday accommodation – and the many local businesses that rely on tourists. As Gove will quickly discover, the parts of the country that are ‘overrun’ with holiday lets are those that don’t tend to have a great deal of industry other than tourism.

And no, his plans won’t help people on low incomes afford a home in their local area – not least because some people on low incomes could well find themselves on no income if tourist businesses end up closing. Moreover, the plans do nothing to reduce the numbers of second homes – the sort which are left empty for much of the year and really do act as a drag on local economies. Gove should be encouraging people to let out their second homes and bringing tourists into the area; instead, he is discouraging them.