At the recent London Summit the G20 have made significant commitments to address both the economic downturn, and regulatory failures of global and national financial markets,instruments and institutions. While some global institutions are to be strengthened for an effective response, the G20 leaders are clear that the majority of regulatory power and decision-making shall remain with the nation-state. In the absence of relevant global democratic oversight structures. It is thus now more than ever the time and task of Parliaments to ensure that the powers of the nation-state are matched by an effective capacity and political will to engage in parliamentary oversight that takes a global view. However, different Parliaments face a range of challenges to live up to this important responsibility. Experience from Britain, France, but also South Africa and India, shows that both the broad sweep and detail of foreign policy, writ large, is very little under scrutiny. As a result, in many countries government policy on major issues that concerns people around the world is only marginally influenced by those who have the most developed statutory powers and legitimacy to do so. The briefing paper outlines some conclusions from research conducted by the One World Trust in this field since 2004, and recommendations on how Parliaments could strengthen their own work in relation to global governance issues.

Accountable advocacy, research and lobbying is important for just and robust policy-making and legislation. The current debate around potential cases of paid-for influencing of of legislation in the House of Lords demonstrates how difficult it is to define the boundaries between the beneficial expertise based involvement of Peers and MPs in legislative processes, and advocacy for particular positions when coupled to external relationships a parliamentarian may have. Based on its research on accountability principles for think-tanks and other policy research organisations the One World Trust research briefing "Accountable Lobbying of Parliament" explores ways to further strengthen and add to the tools for making lobbying in Parliament more accountable proposed in the recent report of the Public Administration Select Committee “Lobbying: Access and Influence in Whitehall”.