UK universities also have 'external examiners', who are academics from the same subject area in other universities. They're tasked with providing moderation fee

UK universities also have 'external examiners', who are academics from the same subject area in other universities. They're tasked with providing moderation feedback to try to keep standards for each (taught) degree classification roughly comparable between institutions. (They also provide input into course design, warn university highers-up if the programme is going off the rails, and other things). It's far from perfect, and standards do vary from course to course and institution to institution, but it's better than nothing. And not all in one direction, either: after the first year of the MSc programme I (later) took, the external examiners' report said that our department had marked very harshly, and several excellent students deserving of distinctions (and who would have got them in other universities) had been denied. The recommendation was to actually award the highest marks in the future. I'm directing my own new MA programme next year, and I'm curious to see what feedback I get. Marking, where there's no established disciplinary body of knowledge to get through and assess, is decidedly non-trivial to get right.