The West Midlands should have its own "grand committee" in the House of Commons to interrogate Ministers, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke said.
MPs would have the power to demand a fair deal from Government and tell it where it was going wrong.
Mr Clarke said English regions were not given "sufficient priority" compared with Scotland, Wales and London.
And he warned a new approach was needed after Labour's hopes of establishing elected regional assemblies in the English regions were dashed.
The Government had planned to set up mini-parliaments across England, based on the Scottish and Welsh assemblies.
But the policy was scrapped after voters in the North-east rejected the idea in a referendum.
Ministers also toyed with creating powerful "city regions" with significant powers over training, transport and economic development, but these proposals have been watered down following opposition from the Treasury.
Mr Clarke's proposal has the advantage of giving the regions a voice without creating a new tier of government. MPs would become the region's champions instead.
However, the proposal would give them only the power to quiz Ministers and express their opinions, rather than directly making decisions about spending or policies.
Speaking at the University of Edinburgh, Mr Clarke said: "The position in the English regions needs a complete rethink, following the decisive vote against the North-east Regional Assembly.
"I think that the current situation does not give sufficient priority to the needs of the English regions and so is potentially unstable. It needs to be addressed."
Mr Clarke said he was calling for two changes, including organising public services on a regional level.
He added: "The second is to establish more effective Parliamentary debate about the
work of central government in the regions, for example through Regional Grand Committees, rather like the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees of the past, with English regional select committees to examine particular aspects of central government provision on a regional level.
"These proposals are intended to address the fact that there is currently still insufficient co-ordination of government policies at the regional levels and too much bureaucratic overlap between national and regional layers of government.
"This leads to delay and imprecision with too little parliamentary scrutiny of the local and regional impact of government decisions.
"This would in my opinion work better than a new tier of government, at the regional level at least initially."
The present situation, in which Scotland and Wales had autonomy but the English regions did not, could lead to "instability" in the future, he warned.
He also called for Parliament to have the power to appoint senior civil servants. They are currently appointed by Tony Blair and the Cabinet.
He called for the voting age to be reduced to 16 and for the introduction of a form of proportional representation.
Mr Clarke was Home Secretary for 18 months until he was sacked in May following a series of failures in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate.
While in the post he pushed through controversial plans to create a regional West Midlands police force, but these were abandoned by the Government once he left.
