Tenants in housing association properties should be given the right to buy their homes to help end the shortage of social homes, two senior MPs have said.
Conservative David Davis and Labour's Frank Field joined forces to promote the move in a report for the IPPR thinktank.
They urged ministers to extend the policy to around a million people presently excluded from the opportunity offered to council house tenants.
Doing so could generate billions of pounds, all of which should be ploughed back into building new homes to ease growing waiting lists, they said.
The government is conducting a consultation on housing reforms - including raising the discounts offered to council tenants in England to a maximum of £50,000.
Ministers have promised that any home bought under the revamped scheme - first introduced by Margaret Thatcher - will be replaced by a new affordable home for rent.
The MPs said that as part of the review, ministers should examine the impact of extending the right-to-buy to the growing numbers in housing association properties.
"In 1980, Margaret Thatcher's government gave council tenants the right to buy their homes. This policy transformed the lives of some of the least affluent in society, helping two million Britons become homeowners for the first time," they wrote.
It was a policy for the many, not the few.
"However, the current rules mean many housing association tenants who are willing and able to buy their home are not allowed to do so. A million housing association tenants do not have the right to buy, while the last government's restriction of right to buy discounts also made it more difficult for council tenants to buy their home this way.
"Preventing social tenants from owning their home ties up billions of pounds of public funds that could be better used to help people on to the housing ladder. Reinvigorating and extending the right to buy would not only increase home ownership: by using all the funds raised to build new homes, the policy would lift the most vulnerable households in Britain off waiting lists, out of temporary accommodation and into a place they can call home."
Housing Minister Grant Shapps said: "The government is determined to pull out all the stops to help those who aspire to buy their first home.
"This includes social housing tenants and we will continue to look at ways to support everyone who wants to get on the property ladder.
"We welcome the views expressed as part of a contribution to the debate and our consultation process and we will be considering them alongside other responses in due course.
"The previous government's restrictions on discounts meant right to buy became, for many tenants, nothing more than an empty promise.
That's why we have already published proposals that will dramatically increase the discounts under right to buy, ensuring it once again becomes a meaningful tool to support social tenants who want to buy the home they live in."