Michael Gove has described the decline of the local and regional media in the UK as “one of the sadnesses of my adult lifetime” and himself as a “journalist gone to the bad” in a speech to industry professionals.

The Environment Secretary, who started his career as a trainee reporter at the Aberdeen Press and Journal in the 1980s, backed his “bedraggled” but “noble” former trade “because the pursuit of journalism is the pursuit of truth and without truth democracy dies in darkness”.

Gove also worked for the Times between 1996 and 2005, when he left to become an MP. He has since returned to the newspaper, between bouts in Government, to write columns and interview US President Donald Trump.