Section 126: Court's general discretion to exclude evidence

Criminal Justice Act 2003 · 2003 c. 44View on legislation.gov.uk

Part 11: Evidence — Chapter 2: Hearsay evidence

In criminal proceedings the court may refuse to admit a statement as evidence of a matter stated if—

the statement was made otherwise than in oral evidence in the proceedings, and
the court is satisfied that the case for excluding the statement, taking account of the danger that to admit it would result in undue waste of time, substantially outweighs the case for admitting it, taking account of the value of the evidence.

Nothing in this Chapter prejudices—

any power of a court to exclude evidence under section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (c. 60) (exclusion of unfair evidence), or
any other power of a court to exclude evidence at its discretion (whether by preventing questions from being put or otherwise).

About this text

This legislation text comes from legislation.gov.uk. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. These source and reuse terms cover the legislation text, not Remedy's commentary.

Reuse reviewed 21 August 2026 under Open Government Licence v3.0.