The petition, which was launched by Kevin Hamilton, is not directly related to SELECT’s concurrent lobbying campaign to have the occupation “electrician” made a regulated professional designation available only to those who are fully-qualified.

Should it attract 10,000 supporters, the UK government is honour-bound to respond to the petition; should it receive 100,000 signatures the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.

Newell McGuiness, SELECT’s managing director, said: “Half the population of Europe lives in societies where ‘electrician’ is a regulated profession, as it is in Commonwealth countries including Australia, New Zealand and Uganda.

“There are a great many benefits to society in regulating the profession of electrician, not least that of significantly enhanced health and safety, but also including increased mobility of labour.

“We have no direct involvement in the petition which seeks to make it a criminal offence for unqualified people to work with electricity but we support its general thrust in that it recognises that working with electricity can be, sometimes, a matter of life and death and only suitably qualified people should be permitted to do so.”

SELECT’s 1200 members account for around 90 per cent of all electrical installation work carried out in Scotland and have a collective turnover of around £1 billion, providing employment for some 15,000 people.