As Prime Minister Andy Burnham tours Britain promising “everyday fixes”, from banning phoney bargains to make subscriptions easier to cancel, families like Donna O’Hara’s are still choosing between food, rent and heating. Behind the consumer-protection rhetoric lies a deeper emergency: Universal Credit that no longer covers the basics, private rents that outpace housing benefit, and more than a decade of austerity that has left 7.4 million low-income households unable to afford at least one essential. With the October Budget looming, campaigners and analysts warn that without structural reform to welfare, housing and local economies, Burnham’s plan risks being remembered as tinkering around the edges of a crisis that is breaking Britain’s social contract.