Pink's husband here. I'm currently in the process of compiling appeal papers for both PIP and ESA. My wife has a number of mental health conditions and so I'm having to do this. The first thing I have to say is how brutal the whole process is. Not only the application, assessment, decision letters and mandatory reconsideration decision letters. I cannot believe that someone with any type of disability has to go through this, luckily my wife has me to support her but I guess there must be so many out there without.
Anyway, one thing I noticed in each of the mandatory reconsideration letters was the DWP stating (in very similar words) that the Health Professional is objective and has nothing to gain from the process. Now this strikes me as a little disingenuous. Surely Maximus has an incentive to score people pretty low as this is a Government objective and also as they are being paid by the Govt. with contract performance measures and with potential for ongoing contracts. So - is there any evidence that Maximus is in fact incentivised to score people low other than anecdotal?