MK (A Child By Her Litigation Friend CAE), R (On the Application O... 9 of 12 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2017/1365.html like one. There is some evidence for the former proposition but not for the latter. The statements did not purport to do anything other than state the Vietnamese government's position. They amounted to a refusal to treat Mr Pham as a Vietnamese citizen. Even if one were to assume that these statements conclusively determined Mr Pham's nationality at the time that they were made, there is no basis on which they could relate back to an earlier date when the Vietnamese government knew nothing about Mr Pham and had no position one way or the other about his status. The judge may well have been right to say that they are good evidence of what the Vietnamese government's position would have been on 22 December 2011 if they had been asked on that date. But if they were not a court of law or like a court of law, and it is clear that they were not, that is irrelevant. It follows that if anyone has rendered Mr Pham stateless, it is not the Home Secretary on 22 December 2011 but the Vietnamese government thereafter." 30. Thus, although the facts took the court to the converse answer, the question was the same simple one as that posed in Al-Jeddah: did the subject of the order have, on the date of the order, nationality of another State? 31. As I have made clear, these decisions are not specifically on statelessness as it applies in paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 to the 1981 Act. They are on statelessness as it applies in s 40(4) of the same Act. Before me, Mr Brown's clear argument was that the Supreme Court's decision in Al-Jeddah was not applicable to the present case because the guidance to which Lord Wilson refers at [34], and which he evidently regarded as the coup de grace to the Secretary of State's argument in that case, is applicable only to "persons who have no other right to remain in the UK but who cannot be removed because they would not be admitted to another country for purposes of residence to be allowed to stay" and so cannot apply to the claimant because she would be admitted with her parents to India. 32. I am afraid that will not do. The guidance, in 'Asylum Policy Instruction: Statelessness and applications for leave to remain' (the current edition is 18 February 2016) indeed is not specifically on point, as it is concerned with the application of Part 14 (paragraphs 401 and following) of the Immigration Rules and not of either of the statutory provisions I am looking at. But, as I have already noted, paragraph 401 expressly incorporates the 1954 Convention's definition into the Rules, and this guidance is on how to apply the Rules. It is necessarily implicit that this guidance is guidance on the meaning of 'statelessness' within the Rules, and furthermore, because of paragraph 401, is the Secretary of State's understanding of the meaning of statelessness under art 1(1) of the 1954 Convention. 33. The point being made by Lord Wilson is that it is the UNHCR's guidance on the meaning of statelessness for the purposes of art 1(1) of the 1954 Convention that has been adopted into the Secretary of State's own guidance. The date of the guidance excluded it from consideration in relation to the decision-making in Al-Jeddah itself. But the Court makes its own decision on the meaning of statelessness at that time within the context of s 40(4) and does so as a matter of statutory interpretation against the background of the Conventions. It then notes that the UNHCR Guidance produces the same result, and has been adopted by the Secretary of State. 34. Now it is clearly open to the Secretary of State and indeed anybody else to say that the notion of having no nationality for the purposes of the Refugee Convention is different from that of statelessness for the purposes of the Statelessness Conventions and any associated national legislation. The terms are different, and the context is different: in the Refugee Convention the essential context is the threat of expulsion and issues of destination are crucial, whereas the statelessness issue is in essence static. It would also have been open to the Secretary of State to say in the course of either the Al-Jeddah litigation or this case that for the purposes of the legislation 20/05/2021, 15:49