An Army Veteran has called for the end of "DEI" in the defence industry after a damning sex dossier revealed women being told to "put up and shut up" in order to uphold gender targets.

Speaking to GB News, Neil Pressley declared the report a "DEI disaster", and said the Army should be hiring the "right person for the right job".

The outrage follows a sex dossier into the Army being published after having been suppressed since 2022.

The report, written by Professor Anthony King, found female soldiers would "lock themselves in their rooms" in fear of being "sexually assaulted". The Army aims for 30 per cent of recruits to be female by 2030 in a bid to "change its culture".

Veteran Neil Pressley has called for an end to DEI after a damning sex dossier found women fearing 'predator' men in the army

Delivering his verdict on the report, Mr Pressley told GB News: "I'm not surprised in the slightest, it's been going on for years, but what is more surprising is the lack of response from the military.

"It's the closed doors, the fact that the women have been actually left to pretty much like the grooming gangs now been told to shut up and put up."

Recalling his own time in the Army, he added: "In my day, I didn't see it as much because women and men were separated.

"This report of a guy knocking on a woman's door for two hours, that would have been stopped. I mean, to be quite honest, if men went into the women's blocks, they'd be arrested."

Hitting out at the army's push for DEI, the veteran stated: "The fact is that this country has become far too interested in DEI, rather than looking at who's suitable to do the job."

A report carried out in 2022 found that female soldiers would 'lock themselves in their rooms' through fear of 'sexual assault'

Weighing in on the report, host Miriam Cates argued that if any industry was to be "male coded", it should be the military.

She explained: "The idea that the report says the Army is too 'male coded' and that's the problem, surely if any particular organisation should be male coded, it should be the Army. We want them to go and fight and want them to sacrifice, we want them to go and be brutal sometimes."

Mr Pressley responded: "Well, women have been a vital part of the military for a long, long time, with people like Florence Nightingale.

"Armies aren't nice, wars aren't nice, you can't be a nice person. It's a rough, tough place. But again, you still need a psychological profile because sexual harassment, sexual assaults are inexcusable. And it's not just women that are at risk.

"I've worked for over 12 years within the veteran sector for a military charity, for veterans' mental health, and some of the stories that I'm hearing from male veterans, female veterans, they're horrific. And it's not just males attacking the women, it's females as well. There are female grooming gangs within it, and again, this is where the DEI needs to stop."

Mr Pressley told GB News that it shouldn't be about a 'quota to be inclusive'

Asked by host Andrew Pierce if he believes in the "30 per cent" gender target for women, Mr Pressley fumed: "It's not going to work. There has always been a role for women within the Army, and don't get me wrong, some of the women that I've met in the army put the fear of God in me.

"But it's a matter of choosing the right person for the right job. Is this person capable of doing it? Are they psychologically able to withstand it? Because PTSD does attack and it can attack at any time, whether you're in or out."

He concluded: "It's not a quota of what we need, what's going to make us look all inclusive, we don't need to be inclusive. We need to be able to fight a war.

"We need to be able to defend our country, we need to be able to defend each other, but there still needs to be that sort of level of protection for the women in the forces."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said in a statement: "Unacceptable criminal behaviour has absolutely no place in the military. Since this report was carried out in 2022, we've seen significant changes in the army."