Alex Salmond yesterday claimed there is now "proof positive of Westminster deceit" over Scotland's oil wealth.

The First Minister was speaking after documents released under the 30-year rule showed the thinking behind the decision of Jim Callaghan's Labour Cabinet to create a specific region called the UK Continental Shelf so that oil revenues would not accrue to Scotland.

Trade Secretary Edmund Dell wrote a briefing for the Cabinet on March 30, 1977, stating: "There was no agreed way of allocating the North Sea area to the indigenous regions, and the attempt to do so would inevitably distort the regional accounts.

"The great majority of the profit would accrue to Scotland, and would represent almost a doubling of the Scottish GDP, which in 1974 had been about £6.5bn."

Speaking after documents were made available by the National Archives of Scotland, Mr Salmond said: "These papers are proof positive of the statistical manipulation perpetrated by successive UK governments - Labour and Tory - to hide the extent of Scotland's oil wealth from the Scottish people for nakedly political reasons.

"As recent official figures show, an independent Scotland would move up the EU league table from 10th to 3rd in wealth per head, with our North Sea oil and gas resources included in Scotland's accounts. This is the reality that the London-based parties have been desperate to suppress for decades, but the truth is now out."

The First Minister said that with oil prices at a record high, and huge reserves remaining, we must "make sure that Scottish control and opportunity replace the Westminster chicanery of yesteryear".

He pointed to Norway's Oil Fund established a decade ago and now worth £177bn, securing the benefits of their oil wealth "virtually for ever".

Mr Salmond added: "If we are to enjoy the same benefits from our oil as Norway, then we must make our own future as an independent nation, and learn the lessons of Westminster's deceit."

He pointed out that Energy Minister Malcolm Wickes had admitted in October that Norway had done a better job of husbanding its oil revenues than Britain. "If you could replay history, the idea as in Norway of building up a national fund is actually quite an attractive one," Mr Wickes had been quoted as saying.

A briefing paper by the Scottish Government's chief economic adviser shows that fuelled by oil revenues the UK lies seventh in a table of 27 European nations for Gross Domestic Product per capita. If Scotland was allocated a share of either 75% or 90% of oil and gas revenues it would lie third on that list, behind Luxembourg and Ireland.