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.
