David Cameron will place job losses at Oxfordshire health trusts at the heart of his first major campaign as Tory leader.

The Witney MP and Tory leader said a national drive to "Stop Brown's NHS cuts", launched next week, had been prompted by threats to services in his county.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail at his party's conference in Bournemouth, Mr Cameron said: "What I've seen in Oxfordshire has helped inspire me to make this into a big national campaign.

"In Oxfordshire we have got that terrible combination of big deficits and real service reduction.

"People are not just disappointed but perplexed, after all the money that has gone into the health service, that there are such huge programmes of closures, redundancies and cutbacks."

The pace of change towards a system in which hospitals vie for patients and get paid by results has been blamed for putting hundreds of jobs at risk in Oxfordshire.

Despite record investment in the NHS, 29 hospital staff have been made redundant in the county this year as managers follow Government orders to cut a £33m deficit.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust has said 500 staff could lose their jobs, with 200 going by the end of 2006.

Meanwhile, the Tories say, community hospitals in Abingdon, Bicester, Townlands, Wallingford and Wantage are all under threat of losing services or closure.

Mr Cameron said his party was not ready to unveil detailed health policies of its own. But, outlining his party's general approach, he said: "There is far too much waste and far too much top-down centralisation and not nearly enough letting professionals take control of the health service."

Mr Cameron denied he wanted the private sector to take over all NHS services.

But he described the Government approach of limiting private sector provision to 15 per cent of NHS procedures as "odd and artificial", suggesting that a Tory Government would extend the role of the private sector.

The Conservative leader, aware that many voters have long viewed his party's plans for the NHS with suspicion, emphasised his commitment to maintaining free health care. He said: "I believe in a National Health Service free at the point of use.

In a reference to his disabled son Ivan, who needs round-the-clock care, he added: "I feel the importance of the NHS every day."

"It's not just that the NHS is safe in my hands. It's that my family is in the hands of the NHS and I want it to be safe there."

The Tory NHS campaign is launched on Monday.