The obligation to provide travel documents is contained in the 1954 Convention, Article 28: “The Contracting States shall issue to stateless persons lawfully staying in their territory travel documents for the purpose of travel outside their territory, unless compelling reasons of national security or public order otherwise require, and the provisions of the schedule to this Convention shall apply with respect to such documents. The Contracting States may issue such a travel document to any other stateless person in their territory; they shall in particular give sympathetic consideration to the issue of such a travel document to stateless persons in their territory who are unable to obtain a travel document from the country of their lawful residence.” The UK Border Agency has a procedure that allows for an individual who is recognised as a stateless person to apply for a Stateless Person’s Travel Document.155 It requires that the applicant holds at least six months leave to enter or remain at the time of the application156 and that the applicant must pay an application fee.157 These restrictions risk conflicting with Article 28 in that persons who may have less than six months leave to enter or remain outstanding on a period of leave of a number of years, and who intend to extend their leave, would not qualify for such a document but could be considered to be “lawfully staying”.158 However, the UK Border Agency justifies this position by stating “[y]ou must have permission to stay here for at least six months from the date you make your application. This is because other countries may not accept your travel document if you have less than six months’ permission to return to the United Kingdom”.159 Furthermore, as these documents are issued on a discretionary basis, the Secretary of State could grant such documents to stateless persons who did not possess six months leave to enter or remain, avoiding the risk of any incompatibility.160 That said, there is no evidence in practice or policy that indicates that the Secretary of State is prepared to grant a 1954 Convention Travel Document to stateless persons in the UK that are not lawfully staying. No details are given in published UK Border Agency policy about the procedure that is used to determine whether a person has the status of a stateless person for the purposes of obtaining a Stateless Person’s Travel Document. The only public documents available are the application form161 and the very limited guidance note provided for applications for a Stateless Person’s Travel Document.162 However, anecdotal information was obtained from a semi-structured interview with members of the Travel Document team.163 During this interview it was suggested that the whole of the immigration file is reviewed when considering whether to issue a travel document, and that this was necessary because usually there had been no prior formal identification of 74 155 See UK Border Agency, Stateless persons’ travel document, available at: www.ukba.homeoffice. gov.uk/visas-immigration/while-in-uk/travel-abroad/traveldocuments/statelessperson/. 156 See UK Border Agency TD112 Guidance Notes, Version 04/2011, available at: www.ukba. homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/applicationforms/traveldocuments/td112-guidance.pdf. 157 The Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2011 No. 445. The fee in 2011 was £77.50 for adults and £49 for children. See UK Border Agency UK Border Agency Fees April 2011, available at: www. ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/aboutus/fees-table-spring-2011.pdf. 158 See, for a discussion of the interpretation of “lawful stay”, Section 5.3.1. 159 See UK Border Agency TD112 Guidance Notes, Version 04/2011, available at: www.ukba. homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/applicationforms/traveldocuments/td112-guidance.pdf. 160 The authors are grateful to Paul Luckhurst, Counsel, Blackstone Chambers, for this point. 161 UK Border Agency TD 112 Guidance Note, op. cit. 162 Ibid. 163 Semi-structured interview with UKBA Travel Document Team (9 August 2011). It was not possible to systematically audit individual files involving Stateless Person Travel Document applications in order to verify the approach taken. Mapping statelessness