No, but neither of those two organisations hand out Mechanicals, do they? A British Publisher has no method of getting their hands on the Writer's share of Broadcast Royalties, as those come directly to the Writer from PRS, so would be unable to recoup from that. I think there is just a misunderstanding of the contract here.
Look at the wording:
...due directly from us...
Writer's PRS payments come from PRS. Not the Publisher.
You may be right Daryl. I didn't read the paragraphs from the contract and I'm not going to -- as you undoubtedly know, nobody can interpret a contract's overall impact from reading just a section, so I'm being cautious with advice.
As should the OP be cautious with what advice he gets on a forum.
But caution cuts both ways, given that there always seem to be new ways people dream up to take more away from composers. You probably have heard that there was a company in Los Angeles that, for years, required composers to list one of their executives as a co-writer, thus grabbing a portion of the writer's share. It's stories / history like that that makes me urge caution.
That said, the publisher needs to make money.
Apart from other considerations, like reputation, past experience with the team, I weigh these concepts when it comes to library / production music:
1. Ideally, they have "skin in the game" -- Either they pay you a fee up front or they pay to hire the orchestra. Depending on how much money they put at risk, it's reasonable for them to get a lot: (1) the publishing, (2) control of the music and the masters permanently, and (3) the right to recoup their costs before the composer gets money. After all, they are risking cash. Besides, a large proportion of production tracks never earn anything at all so the company knows that a certain amount of what they put at risk will never return anything to them;
2. If nothing up front -- If they don't pay a fee or cover meaningful production costs, one could argue they have limited incentive to market your tracks and, unless someone else paid for the production, the composer may have a player-less track that doesn't necessarily sound that impressive as a demo or one into which the
composer has invested meaningful money. In that circumstance, I would ask for a reversion of some kind -- that all rights revert back to composer if, after some time (one year? three years?) the track has not licensed. That way you don't give it away forever if they don't make you any money. If you have hired players yourself, you could negotiate over their supposed "out of pocket" costs.
The other thing is to ask for some kind of limit to how much they spend -- if they spend over a certain amount, they don't recoup, or they have to talk to you first to be entitled to recoup. Not saying you'll get that but it's not an unfair thing to ask what they picture spending on "mastering" or "remixing." Those can cost not much or a heck of a lot.