The Duck House The Duck House The Duck House is a 2013 comedy farce play written by Dan Patterson and Colin Swash. It is based around the events of the 2009 UK parliamentary expenses scandal, and made its world premiere at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in October 2013, at the start of a five-week UK tour. The production then transferred to the West End's Vaudeville Theatre, where it ran until 29 March 2014. The play is set in May 2009, one year before the General Election, Gordon Brown's Labour government is unpopular. Robert Houston is a Labour backbencher seeking to defect to the
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State the most senior civil servant in a government department (officially also known as the Permanent Under-Secretary of State), nor with a Parliamentary Private Secretary (an MP serving as an assistant to a minister entitled to directly relevant expenses but no further pay). Of his tenure as an under-secretary in Macmillan's 1957–1963 Conservative government from the Lords, the Duke of Devonshire noted "No one who hasn't been a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State has any conception of how unimportant a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State is". Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State A Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (also called a Parliamentary Secretary, especially