Updates to the NHS written constitution are to safeguard biological sex, rather than gender ideology, after a long and protracted battle from campaigners.

The changes will mean that women-only wards will be single-sex, rather than single-gender (so they cannot be accessed by a biological male declaring that he feels that he is a woman), and will give women the right to ask for a biologically female doctor for healthcare in intimate areas.

These changes will be in contradiction of previous NHS guidance, which declared that transgender patients could be placed in the wards for the gender which they identified as.

Now, the constitution is to explicitly say: “We are defining sex as biological sex”, and that patients in single-sex wards will “not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite biological sex.”

The NHS constitution is supposed to be updated every 10 years by the Secretary of State for health: it was last updated in 2015. Its purpose is to make clear its values, and the legal rights of patients and staff.

The volte-face comes shortly after the publication of the Cass Review, which found that “social transitioning” for young people was more likely to lead them to pursue life-changing, potentially-damaging and insufficiently-tested surgical pathways later in life.

The updates to the constitution are also expected to ask for clear language, based around biology, to be used when communicating with patients, after complaints about ideologically-driven use of words like “chestfeeding” (rather than “breastfeeding”) and “people who give birth” (rather than “women”).

The Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said: “We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible. We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that.

“By putting this in the NHS constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”