Oxfordshire GPs took part in a demonstration to continue their fight against plans by Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson for a new health centre.

According to Keep Our NHS Public, his Virgin Group wants to build and administer NHS health centres using sub-contracted GPs.

Services provided by GPs would remain on the NHS, but other services including dentistry, laser eye surgery and physiotherapy would have to be paid for, according to KONP.

Virgin Healthcare wants the first new health centre to be "in the M4 corridor" - but it is believed a second could follow in Oxfordshire, possibly in the Didcot area.

About 50 campaigners protested outside the meeting on Monday night at St Hugh's College in Oxford and carried a banner with the the slogan "Virgin on the ridiculous".

Dr Helen Groom, a GP in East Oxford and Secretary of the Oxfordshire Keep Our NHS Public campaign, said: "Virgin made it very clear they are interested mainly in providing health centres in areas where patients have got the money to pay extra for services such as counselling, dentistry, physiotherapy and blood tests, which at the moment all patients are entitled to on the NHS.

"In areas where local people don't have the extra money to provide profits for Virgin they intend to take over local community health services by undercutting them.

"Patients will only be consulted after the changes have taken place - it's out-and-out privatisation."

During the past few months, Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust has been consulting patients on the establishment of the GP-led health centres.

Dr Ken Williamson, chairman of Keep Our NHS Public in Oxfordshire, said: "This meeting was organised as part of a roadshow to wine and dine GPs and convince them to hand over their patient lists to Virgin."

Dr Helen Salisbury, a GP in Jericho who attended the meeting, added: "It's all about big business moving into making money out of providing health services.

"Big companies had tried to move into providing hospital services locally and failed.

"Virgin are moving into general practice and appealing directly to the pockets of GPs.

"This means they can bypass any objections by the patients of the practices involved."

Lara McLeod, a spokesman for Virgin Healthcare, confirmed the company was involved in discussions regarding a GP centre, but was unavailable for further comment.