Donald Trump may end up getting a settlement worth around $10m from the BBC, a friend of the president has said.

In an interview on the Today programme, Christopher Ruddy, who has known Trump for years and who runs the rightwing media company Newsmax, said that, although the BBC would have a strong defence under US law, it would also have big incentives to settle. He explained:

When an American case like this goes forward, the court usually gives the plaintiff, in this case it’s the president, very significant powers of discovery. And they’ll get emails and conversations and private things that were said by BBC executives about him, about his campaign, that may not be very flattering and may have shown an intent to harm him in the production of this.

I’m not seeing that will happen. I’m saying it could happen.

And so, rather than go through that, they the defendant in this case, the BBC would, would likely offer a settlement.

Ruddy said, he were advising the BBC, he would urge them to go for a “quick and easy settlement” because a legal battle would not “look good”. He went on:

[Trump] is obviously not going to get $5bn. If I was looking into a crystal ball, I might say this case would settle probably around $10m.

The cost of litigation for the BBC to go through a case like this in the United States with attorneys would be probably about $50m to $100m. And the president has an excellent attorney well known in defamation, Alex Brito of Miami. He’s a very serious legal contender. These things are usually ugly. And that’s usually why they settle … I’m sure the BBC has enough money to cover a settlement of that size.

Donald Trump’s lawyers have also quoted Liz Truss, the former Conservative PM, in their lawsuit against the BBC to support their claim that the president was defamed. The document says:

No less an authority than the United Kingdom’s former prime minister, Liz Truss, discussed this bias, the need to hold the BBC accountable, and the BBC’s pattern of actual malice.

Remarked Truss: “[The BBC] is a huge problem. They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage, especially in the case of President Trump, but also covering up what’s happening in Britain whether it’s mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems, they are always biased towards the left . . . .” She was also asked whether the BBC’s tepid apology was sufficient, and responded: “No I don’t, because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years, they’vedone the same thing about conservatives in our country . . . .” Lamenting the BBC’s lost status as a “paragon” of journalism, she remarked that the BBC’s “fake news” has caused immense harm to the public for a long time.

BBC bosses are “right to stick by their guns” against Donald Trump, Stephen Kinnock, the health minister has said, after the US president filed a $10bn lawsuit against the corporation. Eleni Courea has the story.

Good morning. Ministers are due to publish today a green paper on BBC charter renewal, setting out plans for how the corporation will be funded into the 2030s. With fewer and fewer people watching free-to-air TV, the licence fee is getting harder to justify, but there is no consensus as to what should replace it.

However, within the BBC at least, there probably is a consensus that the last thing licence fee payers want to see their money spent on is a multimillion-pound compensation payment to Donald Trump.

This has come to a head because the president has finally filed his lawsuit demanding damages worth up to to $10bn for the way a BBC Panorama documentary edited a clip from the speech he gave to supporters on 6 January 2021 before they attacked the US Capitol. Here is our overnight story by Callum Jones and Jeremy Barr.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has regularly accused the BBC of being biased on particular issues and, when news of the Panorama edit became a political controversy (more than a year after the programme was actually broadcast), she merrily joined the chorus of people attacking the BBC over the way the programme was put together. What British voters made of her comments is not entirely clear, but she seems to have impressed the president’s legal team, who quote her in the lawsuit to support their case. They say:

Conservative party leader and member of parliament Kemi Badenoch said that the distortion of the speech by the Panorama documentary was “absolutely shocking,” adding: “That is fake news, actually putting different things together to make something look different from what it actually was.” She continued: “And I do think heads should roll. Whoever it was who did that should be sacked, that’s what Tim Davie should be doing, identifying who put out misinformation, and sacking them.” Badenoch added: “The public need to be able to trust our public broadcaster .. . They should not be telling us things that are not true. This is a corporation that needs to hold itself to the highest standards, and that means that when we see people doing the wrong thing, they should be punished, they should be sacked.”

Keir Starmer has, up to now, done his best to avoid getting embroiled in this row, arguing that the BBC is operationally independent and that this is a matter for the corporation and the president to settle themselves. Although there were suggestions at one point that he and Trump would speak about the dispute, that does not seem to have happened. However, he may find it hard to remain uninvolved as this goes on. The lawsuit has been filed as there is evidence in other areas – trade policy, for example – that US-UK relations are no longer quite as warm as they were at the time of the state visit.

But Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is more than happy to speak out. He has regularly urged Starmer to be more robust with Trump in public, over a range of issues, and this morning he said the PM should tell Trump his compensation demand is unacceptable. He said:

Keir Starmer needs to stand up for the BBC against Trump’s outrageous legal threat and protect licence fee payers from being hit in the pocket.

The Trump administration has clearly set out they want to interfere in our democracy, which includes undermining our national broadcaster.

The prime minister needs to make clear this is unacceptable.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

10am: Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor and former PM, resumes giving evidence to the Covid inquiry about the economic response to the pandemic.

11am: John Healey, the defence secretary, hosts a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group with his German counterpart, Boris Pistorius.

11am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, holds a press conference.

2pm: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee.

Late afternoon: Peers vote on the employment rights bill, with business groups urging Tory and cross-bench peers to drop their opposition to the one measure that stopped it being passed last week.

We are also getting 17 written ministerial statements today, which is what tends to happen shortly before a holiday recess, as ministers clear the decks. Today’s statements cover the BBC charter review, sentencing reform and planning reform, among other topics.

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