Under-fire secretary of state for transport says he won't be resigning and has defended the decision to settle a lawsuit with Eurotunnel with a £33m payout.

In his first public statement on the saga, Chris Grayling said the decision to settle a legal wrangle with Eurotunnel was necessary to ensure the UK did not run short of vital medicines.

Eurotunnel had initiated a legal challenge over the way the government had contracted three companies to provide extra ferry services in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It claimed the procurement process had been secretive.

In his first brief statement, the minister said: "The decision we took last week was by the Department for Health to protect drug supplies to the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The decision was taken after discussions within a cabinet committee as we had to prepare for all eventualities.We all want a deal but this was a sensible part of contingency planning to make sure we had all the resource we needed...that is why the cabinet took the decision it did."

"However regrettable the court action was, we had to take a decision to protect the interests of the country in the circumstances of a no deal Brexit. And that’s the right thing to do."

On calls for him to stand down, he said that he would continue as minister as long as the Prime Minister wanted him for.

The minister was heavily criticised yesterday in the Commons to answer urgent questions. In his place, the health minister Matt Hancock responded to MPs' questions.

Labour Transport spokesman Andy McDonald said the cabinet minister had shown his "disregard for taxpayers" by his absence and repeated calls for him to be sacked immediately.

Meanwhile, in the House of Commons today Charlie Elphicke defended Mr Grayling and said if earlier investment had been made the deal would not have been neccessary.

The MP for Deal and Dover said: "Everyone could see what he was trying to achieve which was to take pressure off the Port of Dover and Channel Tunnel in the case there were difficulties with France which at the time was the kind of rhetoric coming from the President.

"The risk is now much less than it was but at the time that was not known and it is right the Secretary of State takes measures on the information before him.

"The reason we are doing this planning is because we haven't invested in our border system as we might have done in the past as we should have done in the past.

"We do need to make sure that we are better prepared on infrastructure irrespective of Brexit, we end up have big queues in Kent, problems on the ferries, problems in the tunnel and that's partly down to infrastructure and that's why there does need to be more investment in Kent."