The full text of Commons Speaker Michael Martin's speech to the parliamentary press gallery marking the bicentenary of the reporting of parliament.

"My Lords, ladies, fellow parliamentarians and distinguished members of the parliamentary press gallery. First, may I thank Chris Moncrieff, Brian Shallcross and the other members of your committee for organising this wonderful evening and for inviting me to be part of it.

We are celebrating an event that took place 200 years ago this week. Pitt was prime minister and Britain had just declared war on France. There was a fervent debate in the House of Commons but it went quite unreported because the press had been locked out of the Chamber.

The Times was furious and thundered its indignation. Its reporters found the gallery newly filled with friends of Members or "persons smuggled into the gallery".

The editor demanded that some arrangement be made "to remedy an inconvenience which equally affected the people and their representatives."

The very next day, May 25, my predecessor Speaker Abbot, ordered the Serjeant at Arms to allocate special seats for the news writers in the back row of the public gallery. It is that significant event that we celebrate here tonight.

Of course, the reporting of parliament goes back much further in history, to Cromwell's Daily Occurrences in parliament.

Before that the affairs of state were not made known to the general public, or perhaps more importantly, to the Monarch.

So in reporting parliament you share an eminent heritage. Amongst your distant predecessors were Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens and William Cobbett who first published Parliamentary Debates, which in time was to become Hansard, that most remarkable transcription service.

May 25 1803 marks the moment when your presence in the chamber progressed from 'barely tolerated' to being officially acknowledged.

Now there are some two hundred of you, print journalists, radio and television and most recently internet reporters.

But whatever the medium, your role is the same now as it was then. You are the nation's eyes and ears at Westminster. All of you are witnesses to the humdrum and high drama that is and always will be politics.

You may wish to know that Members of the House take great comfort from the knowledge that we provide employment for so many members of the media.

It may also be of interest that Speaker Abbot spent £70,000 refurbishing the Speaker's House.

That is £3.5 million in today's money. Amazingly it went unremarked.

He was violently opposed to the emancipation of Catholics, contending that "we ought to withhold from the Roman Catholics all capacity of political power and jurisdiction."

He would turn in his grave if he knew that a Catholic now sat in the speaker's chair and was paying tribute to him this day.

Speaker Abbot reduced Mr Pitt to tears when he used his casting vote against the prime minister during the impeachment of Lord Melville for misuse of Navy Funds, but he did not do so lightly.

One eyewitness wrote: "The speaker's distress was terrible, agitation overcame him, his face grew white. The House waited in an agony of suspense.For 10 minutes he sat speechless and immovable in the Chair, at length he gave his vote, he condemned Lord Melville."

"At the sound of the speaker's voice Pitt crushed his hat over his eyes to hide the tears that streamed from them, then pushed his way in haste out of the House.

He sank under this, his last defeat and died a few months later."

Distinguished members of the parliamentary press gallery. You are the guardians of the people's right to know. Let us hope and pray that parliament and the Press will be as robust two hundred years from now.

In that context I am delighted to announce the establishment of the Speaker Abbot Award for the journalist who has made the greatest contribution to the protection and promotion of parliamentary democracy. I am honoured to have been asked to chair the selection panel and the first award will be made next year.

John Biffen, a former leader of the House, said the relationship between politician and press should be, good-natured, mutually respectful but never cosy.

But the last word should go to that hell-raising eighteenth century MP, the irrepressible John Wilkes, who, when asked how far press freedom extended in Britain, said, 'that is what I am trying to find out.'

Mr chairman, I should like to conclude by proposing a toast.

May the parliamentary press gallery continue to flourish and enjoy its proper and respected place in our parliamentary democracy."