New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show Scotland to be the third most prosperous part of the UK after London and south-east England, according to the leading measure of the value of goods and services produced per person (GVA).

Data from the ONS regional, sub-regional and local gross value added report – the most accurate picture so far of the performance of component parts of the UK in 2010 – show that Scotland's annual per head GVA of £20,220 is surpassed only by London (£35,026) and the south-east (£21,924).

Scotland is significantly ahead of the UK's poorest areas – Wales (£15,145), Northern Ireland (£15,651) and the north-east of England (£15, 744). Scotland's GVA per head is 96% of the UK's figure.

Out of the 133 local areas that comprise the main national and regional units, the highest is in inner London west at £109,278, with the lowest, Gwent valleys in Wales, almost 10 times smaller at £10,654. Edinburgh is the second highest at £35,950.

Scottish economy analyst Paul Teasdale believes that Scotland's relative success is partly due to the strength of its ties to London.

He said: "As London has become perhaps the most important city economy in Europe and has led growth in the UK, this appears to have had greater benefits for the economy of Scotland than for the English regions."

Scotland's strong overall GVA performance has been seized on by the Scottish Secretary Michael Moore as "just one of many economic arguments which underline how important being in the United Kingdom is to the Scottish economy".

He said: "We benefit from being part of one of the most successful trade unions in history and need to understand the positive economic effects are real and consistent. The ties between Scotland and the rest of the UK are too important to be broken."

The figures have been released at the same time as quarterly UK employment figures show Scotland's unemployment figure rose from 7.5% to 8.5 or 229,000 people, slightly higher than the UK's 8.3% rate.

Richard Baker MSP, Scottish Labour's finance spokesman, said: "Any strength in our economy should be embraced and built on in these tough times. But it will be important to see how these figures have borne up in the face of recent deeply worrying statistics which show fragile and falling economic growth in Scotland and a growing unemployment crisis."

The Scottish Conservatives' finance spokesman, Gavin Brown, said: "[While] the overall GVA figure for Scotland is markedly higher than Wales, Northern Ireland and most regions of England, the growth figures between 2009 and 2010 (both per head and in total) are lower than every region in England except London, and Wales and Northern Ireland. We therefore lost ground compared to most of the UK in 2010 which is slightly disappointing.

"Lower growth all round will be the case for 2011, but it is unclear how Scotland will have performed as against other parts of the UK. We have certainly finished the year poorly with weak retail figures and alarmingly high unemployment announced in Scotland last week."

David Bell, professor of economics at Stirling University, said that the positive picture of Scotland's performance underlined the need to "urge people to take comfort in how well we are doing and to stop talking the Scottish economy down". However, he added that the figures were "no cause for complacency".

Bell said the data's reinforcement of the close alignment between Scotland and the UK is likely to be used to counter arguments that Scotland would fare better in a European currency union than a UK one, even if the eurozone's current troubles were solved.

The ONS describes GVA as "a useful way of comparing regions of different sizes and an important indicator for both domestic and European policy purposes. It is calculated using the entire population, including the economically inactive."

Commenting on the GVA figures, a Scottish Government spokesman said: "[We are] doing all we can within our current powers to build sustainable economic growth for Scotland.

"We therefore welcome this recognition that we are performing well in comparison to other parts of the UK.

"However, we will not be complacent and we will continue to take every action possible to boost growth and create jobs across Scotland, while urging the UK Government to do the same."