1 Background and objectives of the research In 2013 the Liverpool Law Clinic began its work on assisting people who are stateless and at risk of statelessness. There were several reasons for doing so. Firstly, the Home Office introduced a procedure in April 2013 for people to request leave to remain in the UK on the basis that they are stateless1 and not admissible to any other country.2 It was clear that there was a gap in provision of legal advice and assistance to people in this area. Advice and representation on statelessness was outside scope of legal aid and in the first few years after the enactment of the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 20123 it was almost impossible to get discretionary legal aid by way of a grant of exceptional case funding. Secondly, the Law Clinic is part of the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice. We teach law students though ‘enquiry-based learning’.4 Students work on real cases under the supervision of one of the Clinic lawyers. Four of the Clinic lawyers are immigration and asylum lawyers and the Clinic has a speciality in this area which is consistent with the social justice ethos of the Department. There is a synergy between our expertise, an identified need, and the opportunity to provide an interesting and informative clinical educational experience for our students. Thirdly, the statelessness team at the Home Office is based in Liverpool and in this means that the Law Clinic is well placed to assist people at statelessness interviews. We have also been able to develop a constructive policy dialogue with the statelessness operations and policy teams and have met with them on a regular basis to discuss issues arising from the procedure. The Law Clinic has continued its work on statelessness cases since the inception of the procedure. With others (Asylum Aid/Migrants Resource Centre,5 the Immigration Law Practitioners Association6 and the European Network on Statelessness7) we are involved with policy work on statelessness. This has included regular meetings with Home Office officials to discuss the implementation of the procedure. We have found these useful and constructive and look forward to this dialogue continuing. We made a joint submission to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review of states’ human rights records in May 2017. The recommendations we set out addressed lack of legal aid, lack of an appeal right, which resulted in three statelessness-related recommendations being made to the UK government.8 1 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons 1954 http://www.unhcr.org/uk/unconventions-on-statelessness.html. With reference to the definition in the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, adopted in the UK Immigration Rules, Part 14. 2 Immigration Rules, Part 14 3 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, Paras 22-32, Part 1, Sch. 1 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/10/contents/enacted 4 Peter Kahn, Karen O'Rourke, ‘Guide to Curriculum Design: Enquiry-Based Learning’ (2018) Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242281830_Guide_to_Curriculum_Design_EnquiryBased_Learning accessed 14.6.2018 5 See https://www.migrantsresourcecentre.org.uk/ 6 See http://www.ilpa.org.uk/ 7 See https://www.statelessness.eu/ 8 ‘Getting Statelessness on the Agenda at the Universal Periodic Review’ (Asylum Aid, 2017) See https://www.asylumaid.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UPR-Summary-Getting-Statelessnesson-the-Agenda.pdf (accessed 14.6.2018); and the UPR submission itself: https://www.upr- 4