Ministers may stop new council houses in England from being sold under the right to buy scheme, Angela Rayner has indicated.

The deputy prime minister said the government would introduce restrictions on new social housing “so we aren’t losing that stock”.

Since it was launched by Margaret Thatcher in 1980, the right to buy scheme has allowed tenants living in council houses to buy them, often at a significant discount.

Successive Conservative prime ministers have extended and encouraged the scheme, which has led to nearly 2m homes being sold.

The policy was praised at first for increasing rates of home ownership among working-class people, but has more recently been blamed for exacerbating homelessness.

Charities and campaigners have called for the scheme to be suspended while more social housing is built.

Rayner told the BBC she did not want more council homes “leaving the system”.

“We’ll be putting restrictions on them so that we aren’t losing those homes … we’re not losing that stock,” she said.

She added that England was facing a “catastrophic emergency situation” in relation to homelessness.

The deputy prime minister bought her own home under the right to buy scheme in 2007.

The government plans to launch a consultation on the policy this autumn. Labour’s election manifesto committed to “increasing protections on newly built social housing”.

Labour has promised to build 1.5m houses over the course of this parliament, but has not put a figure on social homes.

The right to buy scheme ended in Scotland in 2016 and in Wales in 2019. Since entering office, Labour has said the discount buyers in England can receive will be cut to between £16,000 and £38,000, depending on location.

In the budget, Rachel Reeves announced measures to allow councils to keep all the money they receive from social housing sales, a policy the last Conservative government followed for two years until March 2024.

In May Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said right to buy should be suspended for new properties and that the policy caused the city’s housing crisis to get “worse every year”.

David Cameron relaunched right to buy during the coalition government in 2012 and increased the discount at which tenants could buy their council houses. In 2022, Boris Johnson extended the scheme to tenants who rented their homes from housing associations.