Presenting Officer In Use In U.K.

     The United Kingdom has disability benefits as part of its social security system. There are many, many differences between their disability benefits and those in the United States but one way that they are similar is that claimants may have hearings on their cases, before Administrative Law Judges in the United States and before tribunals in the U.K. Those hearings are somewhat different in that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) may be represented at the hearing by a "presenting officer." That's a concept that's been proposed in the past in the U.S. Here's some excerpts from a recent article about the presenting officers in the U.K.:

DWP has finally released information that shows that the presenting officers (POs) it sends to personal independence payment (PIP) appeals must report back to their bosses afterwards on whether they persuaded the tribunal not to grant an enhanced PIP award.

The same applies for those sent to employment and support allowance (ESA) appeals, with POs having to tell their managers whether they persuaded the tribunal not to award the claimant eligibility for the ESA support group. ...

Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, yesterday (Wednesday) described DWP’s admission as “truly appalling”. ...

[The author of this piece] has been in contact with a DWP civil servant working on the PIP “frontline” – who is also a former PIP case manager – who has warned that POs are being given the “target” of stopping enhanced PIP payments. ... 

The minister for disabled people, Sarah Newton, said last November that DWP was “recruiting, training and deploying” about 150 POs to attend PIP and ESA tribunals “in order to present the Secretary of State’s case and support the First tier Tribunal in arriving at the right decision”. ... 

“A PO is not there to prevent an award being changed, but to ensure that the award is correct. ..." ...

Britain Tries A "Presenting Officer" At Disability Hearings

     All developed countries have disability benefits as part of their social security schemes. There are major differences between the plans making cross-national comparisons difficult. However, the British system does afford claimants a hearing on adverse decisions on their disability claims which gives it at least some similarity to the U.S. Apparently, these hearings have been non-adversarial until recently. The British equivalent of the U.S. Social Security Administration has recently started sending "Presenting Officers" to the hearings apparently because they're unhappy that the claimants win a lot of the time. The link I've given is to a message board for those who represent claimants at these hearings. You'll note that they don't seem too concerned about this development. By the way, the salary given for the "Presenting Officers" is £25,631, which is the equivalent of U.S. $34,191.75.

     Also by the way, I keep reminding people that the U.S. Social Security Administration tried adversarial hearings. The trial was a complete failure from any point of view. Specifically, the rate at which claimants were approved remained unchanged. By the way, I can only link to the interim report on the government representative experiment. It was such an abject failure they never did a final report.

The "Disability Industrial Complex"

     From All Things Considered on NPR:

There exists today what I'm going to call a Disability Industrial Complex. And Charles Binder had a big hand in creating it. When he started in 1979, Binder and Binder represented less than 50 clients. Last year, 30,000; 30,000 people who were denied disability appealed with the help of Charles Binder - in one year. The firm made $68.7 million in fees.

So you've got 30,000 people denied disability who are appealing to a judge, taking their case to the courts. And on the one side, the judge has a passionate, persuasive lawyer making the case that his client is physically or emotionally incapable of working. And on the other side - who's on the other side? Nobody. Nobody, really.

     I keep pointing out that years ago Social Security tried having someone present at its hearings to represent its position that the claimant wasn't disabled. It was just a waste of money. It didn't reduce the number of people approved. The government representative idea is a zombie. It's deserves to die but it's almost impossible to kill it.