The BBC has refused to pay compensation to Donald Trump, who has threatened a billion-dollar lawsuit.
The president is yet to respond to an apology over an edited Panorama clip, which appeared to suggest he incited violence during a rally before the attack on the Capitol in January 2021.
The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has welcomed the move. However, Anna Sabine, the Liberal Democrat MP for Frome and East Somerset, said the government needs to do more.
She wrote to the Prime Minister, saying: “You want to support the BBC but you need to pick up the phone to Donald Trump and tell him to drop this ridiculous lawsuit.”
She added: “This would cost British licence payers a billion dollars.”
In a public statement, the BBC said the edit had given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct all for violent action”.
We have 24 hours to stop Trump’s billion-dollar raid on British license fee payers.
— Ed Davey (@EdwardJDavey) November 13, 2025
The Liberal Democrats have written to the Prime Minister, calling on him to demand that Trump drop his ludicrous $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC. pic.twitter.com/rKfPWIhfIJ
When asked her opinion on the BBC’s controversial Panorama edit, Mrs Sabine claimed that “the sequencing has been poor and that is a lesson the BBC are going to learn from this.”
Going forward the Liberal Democrats “would like to see this government robustly defending its national broadcaster”.
