THE Government has promised to investigate the M5 chaos that left thousands of drivers stranded - after your Worcester News highlighted the extent of the misery.

Worcester MP Robin Walker has tracked down one of David Cameron's ministers responsible for roads to tell him about last Friday's shocking delays.

During their conversation, transport minister Andrew Jones asked to be sent a personal copy of your Worcester News front page on Saturday so he could take it further.

Mr Jones has responsibility for overseeing Highways England, which left thousands of motorists stuck for up to 10 hours after overnight works chaotically overran.

During the duo's conversation, which took place in the House of Commons yesterday, Mr Walker said the Government should launch a compensation scheme for drivers.

The city's MP has now sent the minister Saturday's Worcester News and also penned him a two-page letter hitting out at the "extreme" impact it had on the county.

He said: "I showed him what went on the Worcester News front page and he's asked for a copy of it to be sent to his office so he can take it further, which is good news.

"If something like this had happened on the railways they would be fined and people would get compensated, yet we don't have a mechanism to do that for motorways.

"But with automated number plate recognition it ought to be possible to find out who is on the roads, so I've told him we should have a compensation scheme."

Mr Walker said even if nothing could be done retrospectively, Worcestershire's M5 chaos could lead to changes for the future.

"I was pleased by how engaged Andrew was, rather than say it was 'too difficult' he seemed open to taking it further," he said.

"We need to strike while the iron is hot. Some of the complaints I've had from people is that they just weren't alerted to it until they were stuck with nowhere to go."

Highways England was doing overnight work which was supposed to finish at 6am last Friday but it ended up running on into rush hour, with the northbound M5 shut from Junction 5 up to 4A.

The misery went from bad to worse when a crane which was needed to lift the overhead gantry out of position broken down, with hours of delays forming around all the nearby routes.

By the time it re-opened at around 4.30pm some drivers had been stuck for more than nine hours.

Motorists complained of having no water with some saying they had to relieve themselves in whatever containers they could find.

Highways England has launched its own review, pledging that no further full overnight closures will take place "until the matter has been fully investigated".