Duddridge previously held several ministerial positions under prime ministers David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

[1] Duddridge first served under David Cameron as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from May 2010 to September 2012 and as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Africa at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2014 to 2016.

He was a banker with Barclays in the City of London and Africa for 10 years, rising to National Sales Director in the Ivory Coast and eventually running the bank's operations in Botswana with a staff of 750 people.

Duddridge stood as the Conservative candidate in Rother Valley at the 2001 general election, coming second with 21.7% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Kevin Barron.

[10] Duddridge is seen as highly Eurosceptic, having suggested in 2013 that the Government should tell the European Commissioner to "sod off" rather than pay benefits to Romanians and Bulgarians.

[11] On 11 August 2014, it was announced that Duddridge would return to Government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs following the resignation of Mark Simmonds over his claims that he 'could not support his family in London on an MP's salary'.

[14] He was accused by Ian Kennedy of pursuing a "squalid vendetta" after he helped block the former head of the Commons expenses watchdog from an appointment to a new job of electoral commissioner in January 2018.

[16][17] On 9 February 2017, Duddridge tabled an Early Day Motion following comments made by Commons speaker John Bercow on the subject of the pending state visit of US President Donald Trump.

[19] The bid to remove Bercow as Commons Speaker failed after just five MPs backed Duddridge's motion of no confidence.

[21] On 27 September 2017, The Times reported that Duddridge, who had been Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Africa until 2016, was being paid £3,300 for eight hours' work a month as a consultant for Brand Communications on top of his MP's salary.

It was reported that he was working for Brand Communications and that the company was one of a handful that had not agreed to the industry's code of conduct that bans hiring sitting MPs.