Just for the record: I do not see hand flying as a necessary
evil*
However, in some of the skies where I fly, London TMA, Western Europe etc., when the airspace and the RT are so busy; hand-flying would add an unnecessary layer of potential for f**k-ups. Folk can say that PM should be able to deal with PMing even if PF is manually flying, but I would question the wisdom of doing that and possibly overloading the PM, and let’s be honest the PF too, in very busy airspace. So one would have to be sensible.
* In my turbo-prop days, it was extremely satisfying to hand-fly the whole approach, including CDA, vectors and config changes onto a raw data ILS, (manual thrust, no FD’s). To be able to fly all that smoothly, correctly and within limits was a job well done.