asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans and time schedules are being examined for a motorways to connect the industrial Midlands with the container port of Southampton.

A route from Southampton to the Midlands was included in the primary network of strategic trunk routes which, as my right hon. Friend announced on 23rd June last, are to be comprehensively improved by the early 1980s. Several sections of the A34 south of Oxford are already in the firm programme for completion by 1975.