Oh dear, the "hand flying is unsafe / puts a massive strain on the Pilot monitoring" brigade is back. Ask the passengers of the Air france A330 or the Air Asia A320 or the FlyDubai 737 (to mention but three recent examples) what they think of their pilots manual handling skills. As with any skill, use it or loose it. Loosing it is not very wise if you fly aircraft for a living. As far as practicing in the sim we all know that 15 minutes once every 6 months (if that) is simply nowhere near enough to maintain the required level of proficiency.
All pilots MUST be able to hand fly their aircraft without any noticeable reduction in safety or an unacceptable increase in workload, with regular practice it really is not that hard. If they cannot the solution is certainly not to stick the autopilot on and hope their skill shortage is never needed. Does that mean doing raw data holds at Heathrow? certainly not but it does mean manual flying should be encouraged when appropriate.