Cab fares with wheelchair and estate car

Florine

My caree needs to use a folding wheelchair to go any distance - nothing fancy, just the sort of bog-standard folding thing you'd get on the NHS, if you still do. I recently had to take her to the doctor's, a journey of probably 1-1.5 miles, and we were shocked when the cab company tried to charge us £11.50 for the trip, given that the minimum fare is around £6.50. They claimed it was because we'd had an "estate car", but all we'd had was a fairly standard cab with a large boot, and we pointed out that we'd merely said that we had a folding wheelchair to go, and hadn't asked for an estate car. The cab company backed down and charged us the minimum fare, but it got me thinking: a) is it really appropriate to charge that much more, getting on for double the price, just for a larger car as opposed to a people carrier (just imagine how much more costly a trip to e.g. the airport would be), and b) is there a potential disability discrimination issue here? After all, someone without complex equipment needs should surely be able to travel for the same price as an able-bodied person, shouldn't they?