PRIVATE tenants could be given the chance to buy their home from their landlord at below-market prices under right-to-buy plans suggested today by John McDonnell.

The shadow chancellor is floating the idea as a means to tackle the burgeoning buy-to-let market and the problem of landlords who make a “fast buck” while failing to maintain their properties to a decent standard.

The suggestion that could be implemented under a Labour government is loosely based on former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy for council tenants.

The idea was also mooted by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during his leadership bid in 2015.

Mr McDonnell told the Financial Times: “You’d want to establish what is a reasonable price, you can establish that and then that becomes the right to buy.

“You [the government] set the criteria. I don’t think it’s complicated.

“We’ve got a large number of landlords who are not maintaining these properties and are causing overcrowding and these problems.”

Mr McDonnell also detailed a plan for mass transfer of company shares to workers.

Labour in government would transfer some £300 billion of shares in 7,000 large companies to workers in those firms in “inclusive ownership funds.”

It would be one of the largest private-sector transfers seen in a western democracy, the FT reported.

Under that plan every company with more than 250 workers would have to gradually transfer 10 per cent of their shares to their employees over the course of a decade.