Jackson and Cresswell v The Chief Adjudication Officer: No Help for Women in the Poverty Trap
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1994.tb01966.x |
| Author | Polly Durston |
| Date | 01 July 1994 |
| Published date | 01 July 1994 |
July
19941
Jackson and Cresswell
v
lhe
Chief Adjudication Oficer
for surrogacy. Reliance on intent would also destroy the prohibitions on private
adoption placements which underpin our adoption law. But underlying these
restrictions is a deeper assumption. We still require, or at least prefer, some sort
of
biological link to a child, be it genetic
or
gestational, because we view children as
in some way the physical recreations of their parents. We still refuse to face up to
the reality of our acceptance of the importance of social parenthood
-
to an idea of
parenthood as departing from the traditional, pseudo-biological model of two
people of the opposite sex creating and rearing their offspring. In
Johnson
v
Calvert,
probably unintentionally, the Supreme Court of California appears to
have moved a little closer to such recognition.
Jackson and Cresswell
v
The Chief Adjudication
Oficer:
No
Help
for
Women in the Poverty
Trap
Polly
Durston
*
Introduction
In
Jackson and Cresswell
v
The Chief Adjudication
Oficer,’
the ECJ approved
the
UK
Government’s contention that the means tested benefits, Income Support
(IS) and its predecessor, Supplementary Benefit (SB), are not covered by
Directives 79/7/EEC2 and 76/207/EEC3 which implement the principle
of
equal treatment for men and women. The 1979 Directive implements the principle
in relation to certain areas of social security, whilst the 1976 Directive deals with
access to employment and working conditions. The Directives were used by two
British women, Sonia Jackson and Pat Cresswell, both single parents,
in
their
attempt to have their childcare expenses taken into account in the calculation of
their income for benefit purposes. The failure of their case before the ECJ
represents not only a serious setback for the many thousands of British women
trying to escape the poverty trap,4 but also a fundamental weakening in the
effectiveness of the Directives across the Community.
Background
Having been unemployed for some time,
in
September
1986
Sonia Jackson started
a training course organised by the Manpower Services Commission. She received
a training allowance from which she had to pay for childcare for her daughter.
*Lecturer in Law, University of Portsmouth.
I
am gratcful to Julia Sohrab for her assistance with the preparation
of
this note.
1
[1992]
3
CMLR
389;
[I9931
2
WLR 658.
2
OJ
1979
No
L 6/24.
3
OJ
1976
No
L 39/40.
4
The announcement in the November 1993 Budget of a new allowance for childcare expenses for
people on.
inter
ah,
Family Credit, does
not
affect the rules regarding childcare expenses in relation
to
IS.
However, in a post-Budget statement
to
the House
of
Commons on Social Security Uprating,
Peter Lillcy, the Secretary of State
for
Social Security, claimed that the new allowance will enable
50.000
familics
to
take
up
work as a direct result
of
the change (moving from
IS
to Family Credit)
-
Hansurd,
1
December 1993,
Vol
233,
No
10,
at
1040,
1041.
Cj
The
Modern
Law
Review
Limited
1994
64
1
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