Bilderberg Conference Watford 'Too Secret'

A gathering of the world's most powerful people has been slammed for its lack of openness and transparency.

The Bilderberg group holds an annual summit to discuss global policy - and this time around it is meeting in Watford, Hertfordshire.

This year's guest list of 140 high-ranking figures includes Chancellor George Osborne and his Labour shadow Ed Balls, the CEOs of Google and Amazon as well as royalty from around the world.

But no minutes of the meeting are taken and no journalists are allowed inside the secretive four-day event, which counts Tory Cabinet minister Ken Clarke among its organisers.

Labour MP Michael Meacher is critical of the "closely guarded secrecy" of the conference.

"This is the most important gathering of the most powerful people in Western capitalism that there is," he told Sky News.

"It is clearly is going to have an impact on government policy otherwise why is the Chancellor for the fifth time attending and Kenneth Clarke.

"And as far as I know there will be no statement in the House following it saying what happened and how it might affect government policy.

"This is totally in contradiction to the Government's commitment to have greater transparency."

When delegates arrived in cars with blacked-out windows at The Grove hotel, protesters heckled their vehicles as they disappeared down the driveway.

A five-metre steel fence has been erected around the £210-per-night hotel and security is so tight that Watford residents are being forced to show passports, driving licences or other ID at police checkpoints.

Journalists and a handful of protesters are in a pen just inside the grounds, but behind the steel fence and around half a mile from the booked-out hotel.

Mr Meacher is among the group: "I'm standing about half a mile away and can't get any closer to the actual conference.

"We're all kept out and that cannot be right."

The meeting also comes as a new lobbying scandal grips Westminster, forcing the Government to bring forward a bill to crack down on lobbying .

Mr Meacher added: "After the scandals which we heard about in the Lords last week, David Cameron said he was going to set up measures to ensure there was proper regulation of lobbyists - and in particular transparency.

"If there is any conference which required transparency, which required democratic accountability, it is the Bilderberg conference because this is really where the top brass of Western finance capitalism meet in order to make their deals, listen to each other, lobby - including government ministers."

Bilderberg, which formed in 1954, is making an attempt to change its reputation as one of the most clandestine and controversial meetings in the world; it is the first time the guest list and its limited agenda have been publicly released and journalists are allowed near the grounds.

The group defends its "off-the-record" approach on its website: "Thanks to the private nature of the conference, the participants are not bound by the conventions of office or by pre-agreed positions.

"As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights."

So whether Google's Eric Schmidt and Amazon's Jeff Bezos chat about the current issue of tax avoidance in the UK as they mingle with ministers at the Grove may never become public.