TAXI firm V Cars must publicise its policies toward passengers with disabilities in the name of fairness.

Wheelchair user Michael Oliver, as we reveal today, has been using the company’s cars for several months without incident for his daily commuting.

Last week, however, he was charged £5 extra. According to V Cars he was asked for the premium because an estate car was sent and because his wheelchair wouldn’t fold. The company added that drivers had the option to offer a discount on the charge if they wished.

This explanation seems to raise rather more questions than it answers.

For example, if V Cars has a policy of charging passengers £5 extra for an estate car, are passengers advised of this fact when they book a vehicle?

For that matter, why are they charged £5 extra in the first place? Charging extra for, say, a people-carrier would make sense as people carriers can seat more passengers, but estate cars tend to have no more seating than saloons.

One thing is for sure: whatever the policies involved, the net outcome is that a wheelchair user has apparently been obliged to pay more for a taxi journey than a non-wheelchair user might have expected to pay.

If the driver indeed had the option to waive the charge but failed to do so, then they are a mean-spirited specimen indeed, and perhaps not the sort of person a taxi company should be employing in 2015.

At the very least, their conduct toward Mr Oliver has cast the firm in the kind of negative light that can harm trade, and which might impact the livelihoods of blameless drivers who would not dream of behaving in such a way.

V Cars would be well advised to clear the air.