From the OM: "It is encouraged to regulary hand fly the aircraft on departure and aproach, both with or without the flight-director".
Automatisation DOES improve the safety of aviation, but ONLY when being backed up by solid stick-and-rudder experience/ capabilities by the pilots. This you will NEVER gain when just doing 1 hand-flown approach in the sim every 6 months and putting the AP on/off at 500'. It is these "pilots", and these airlines who are most dangerous in the commercial aviation nowadays.
If one gets nervous when having to fly raw-data or if a PM can't follow when his/her collegue flies the aircraft as it was intended to (manually), then that person must ask serious questions wether a job on the ground isn't better suited for him/her.
It seems that there is a big "cultural" difference too regarding automation.
British airlines/flightcrew seem to focus more on the use of their AP, wether most other European carriers promote raw-data flying.