THE alarm went at 5.15am and it was time to get up and get back to work.

Government runs at a slightly different pace in August and I put in some much-neglected family time.

Even in August, work goes on; the red boxes arrive and constituency correspondence continues. With the notable exception of William Hague's dubious claims about his capacity for alcohol intake, it has not been much of a silly political season this year.

With the Bank Holiday over, it's back to full pace even though Parliament doesn't sit until October.

During August I joined Housing Minister Nick Raynsford to announce new plans for fundamental reform of leasehold and the creation of a new way to own land called commonhold.

Anyone who has ever owned a leasehold property knows how much reform is needed.

The proposals have two parts, attacking the worst excesses of our system of leasehold by giving new rights to manage and to buy out the landlord, and also creating a brand new system of land tenure called commonhold.

This is an entirely new way of owning a flat or part of a multi-occupied block.

l This week I launched a new computer system for summoning jurors to attend court.

A total of 250,000 people serve on juries each year. At present court staff pour over paper-based electoral rolls to select people at random.

This is labour intensive, wasteful and often results in more people being selected than are needed.

In pilot tests the new computer system has proved that it can work off electronic electoral rolls, ensuring a genuinely random selection and will only summon the number of jurors that are needed, saving the public wasted time.

More importantly next year it will link to the Police National Computer to cross-check names of electors against criminal records.

Anyone with a relevant criminal record will be screened out automatically. It's an end to any suspicion of old lags serving on the jury.

l The new juror summoning system shows how government can improve with computerised data sharing.

This involves two computers talking and exchanging data on people or transactions.

The junk mail that tumbles through our front door each day shows how it already happens in the private sector but in government it raises tough issues of data protection, freedom of information, privacy and civil liberties.

Last year I served on the committee that worked through the new Data Protection Act.

This sets complex rules to protect each of us by limiting how government (and anyone else) can use the vast amount of data held about each of us on computers.