Bridget Phillipson is back at her favourite seasonal pastime: bashing the travel industry.

The education secretary regularly criticises hotels and airlines for charging higher prices during school holidays. With summer approaching, she’s urged her government to “look at what the options are” to prevent such spikes in future — as if easyJet and Center Parcs just readily exploit captive parents.

The political appeal of this narrative is understandable. In 2024, English schools issued more than 443,000 fines for unauthorised absences, mostly for term-time holidays. A petition opposing the £80 fines has since gained enough support to prompt a parliamentary debate. Rather than acknowledge that the government’s fines are unpopular, it’s easier for Phillipson to implicitly accuse holiday companies of overcharging during school breaks, thus encouraging truancy in term time.

Politically convenient, perhaps, but economically misguided. Prices rise in summer not because firms raise them on a whim, but because sharply increased demand meets rigid supply. Airlines cannot suddenly conjure unlimited aircraft, nor hotels easily add rooms. When families across Europe want holidays simultaneously, limited capacity must be allocated somehow. Higher prices distribute space to those willing to pay more, avoiding chaotic shortages.

Phillipson evidently considers this unjust profiteering, but the travel industry’s profit margins are middling relative to other sectors. No, high-demand periods genuinely raise certain costs: airlines lease pricey extra aircraft, while hotels hire seasonal staff and face intense housekeeping demands. Any extra margin the sectors make in summer must also cover permanent fixed costs — like leases, property upkeep and salaries — that drain profitability through low seasons.

This all explains why an easyJet flight from Gatwick to Majorca nearly doubles in price from early July to early August, or why a family lodge at Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest drops from £2,300 per week in August to £1,200 once school resumes. Phillipson’s complaints cannot alter these basic industry dynamics.

If the government were foolish enough to regulate prices, the results would be disastrous. Capping peak-season rates would create severe shortages during popular travel periods, leaving many families disappointed. Companies could attempt to recover lost revenues by increasing off-season prices — but since customers are more sensitive then, businesses would lose revenues and inevitably cut routes, reduce services or even shut down. The outcome: scarcer and more expensive holidays overall.

Mercifully, the direct government regulation of prices across Spanish hotels and Ryanair flights ain’t happening any time soon. So why worry about Phillipson’s posturing? Given our slow growth, ageing population and global conflicts, ministerial demagoguery about travel prices seems a rather petty concern.

Yet Phillipson’s complaints reflect a troubling mindset within government. Some ministers seem to view economics as a morality tale, in which businesses play villainous roles plotting against hard-pressed families, with politicians cast heroically as riding to the rescue with new regulations and public shaming campaigns.

We see this simplistic thinking reflected clearly in recent initiatives like the employment rights and renters’ rights bills. Landlords and employers are cast as exploiters and oppressors, requiring government to step in and grant new “rights,” irrespective of unintended consequences or economic trade-offs.

Perhaps more concerning still is ministers’ growing disdain for market prices in efficiently allocating resources. Whether it’s Oasis reunion tickets, housing rents or pay differences between supermarket warehouse and checkout workers, Labour seems to think that politicians and judges possess special wisdom in determining “fair” prices — regardless of supply and demand forces. Indeed, Phillipson apparently prefers rewriting thousands of airline and hotel price tags over reconsidering government fine levels or school schedules to reduce truancy.

Unchecked, this misguided economic interventionism threatens more than just holiday affordability — it risks undermining the very foundations of our market economy. Economics isn’t a moralistic pantomime; politicians cannot suspend the laws of supply and demand without consequence. Phillipson’s rhetoric might seem trivial today, but the economic damage if her thinking spreads certainly wouldn’t be.