Desert 185
As someone who did my flying training with the RAF I may of course be biased, but I can tell you that the training aircraft I flew didn't have autopilots. All the flying was by hand in the Chipmunk, Bulldog. Jet Provost and Hawk and by then all those that didn't have the aptitude to hand fly well had been chopped.
Also, we all had to fly at the limits of the performance envelope, in terms of aerobatics and also at high level when close to mach and other limits.
When I did fly multi-engine (the Jetstream) on the IHT (Instrument Handling Test) for the award of a procedural IR the examiner "failed" the autopilot early in the test and all of it had to be hand-flown.
All that need to be done I think is for sim examiners to "fail" an autopilot from time to time so forcing pilots to fly manually more often. That would soon sort out those than can and those that can't hand fly an aeroplane.